“Mali Health is not like other NGOs. When others come, they have their programs; they want their results, and when they depart, everything stops. But with Mali Health, we are consulted and instead of funding, they offer skills that help you evolve your services. This is what I like about their work. Even outside the scope of health, these skills can help you in any context; these skills allow you to identify a problem’s root causes.” —Dr. Karamoko Diallo, Medical Director at the community health center in Lafiabougou, speaking about the continuous quality improvement methods that Mali Health teaches.

IZUMI Foundation supports Mali Health’s program that helps to improve healthcare quality at four community health centers around Bamako.

Before working with Mali Health coaches, the community health center in Lafiabougou functioned like a typical health center in Bamako: day-to-day healthcare was completely disconnected from the administrative body in charge of running the center, and patient health records were non-existent. Dr. Karamoko Diallo, the Medical Director at the health center and member of the community health association that manages the facility, attributes their greatest improvements, since the start of the project, to basic communication.

Dr. Diallo explained that their first major communication challenge was ensuring that the health center care providers understood the target health indicators: How many children returned to finish vaccine courses? How many women delivered at the center? Did they come for pre-natal consultations? Did they come back for post-natal consultations? The health center did not have a reliable method to track patients, or a way to make patient data available, and management did not strategize with clinicians to optimize protocols. Through a series of ongoing workshops with Mali Health coaches, Dr. Diallo and the community health association devised an internal communication circuit designed to increase the availability of data.

After improving communication and care in the health center, Dr. Diallo said the next challenge is to track patients once they leave the health center doors. “Previously,” he says, “almost no patient records were kept, and we had no idea who was due back for another vaccine or consultation.” But with better communication, the center created a database of patient records, including dates of previous visits and anticipated return visits, along with contact information. “With the records, we know when a mother should come back for her next appointment, and a health worker can pull the file and call the patient to remind them.”

Active case management, combined with better management strategies and more clearly defined communication channels, has led to improvements in health outcomes and patient satisfaction at the Lafiabougou health center.