Press Release - CFFESD publishes additional results of the monitoring process of the Primary Health Care Centres in Albania

Tirana, October 21 2014, at 11 a.m. – The Coalition for Free and Fair Elections and Sustainable Democracy (CFFESD) presented today additional results (please find the results in appendix 1, attached to this press release) of the monitoring of 550 Primary Health Care Centers (PHCC) in Albania. The monitoring was organized in one day, on October 16, 2014, in 550 Health Centers selected via a random nationally representative sample. The observers stayed at selected health centers during the entire day, from opening to closing, and reported their findings based on the questionnaire three times during the day.
CFFESD received a response by 99.4 % of the observers deployed in the primary health care centers according to the selected sample, or 547 out of 550 monitored centers. The following results can be extrapolated to all PHCC throughout Albania. Our data are reliable within a 3.7 margin of error with 95 % confidence interval.
The overall goal of the project is to improve citizen's ability to receive proper medical services from primary health centers. Specific objectives are as follows:
• Conduct comprehensive analysis of functioning of the health centers throughout Albania.
• Work with national and local level decision makers towards improvement of health centers functioning.
• Publish the findings and recommendations.
To accomplish the monitoring of the primary healthcare system, CFFESD relied on a series of documents, strategies, legal acts and regulations governing the functioning of primary health care in Albania. These documents were used as the basis for developing the questionnaire, which served as a basic tool for monitoring of performance of primary health care centers, as well as the manual, which was used in the training of the field observers.
The main sections of the questionnaire are as follows: 1)General Data; 2) Administrative Information; 3) Primary Health Care Center Infrastructure; 4) Primary Health Care Center Equipment; 5) Primary Health Care Center Inventory Check List; 6) List of Documents in the Primary Health Care Center; 7) Closing Procedures of the Health Centers; 8) Patient Satisfaction
The key questions of this study related to the programming goals are as follows:
1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of primary health centers? What characterizes a strong or weak primary health center?
2. What areas of investment could be considered most effective?
3. In particular, which regions and cities in Albania have the most need for improvement?

Limitations
• This research is just a day long and cannot evaluate general performances of the health care centers and longer-term quality of their services but just get a snapshot of what are the Albanian health centers performance and quality of their services on one randomly selected day
• Health centers premises in Albania could be one room and could go up to several stores buildings. In each health center, due to funding constraints CFFESD deployed only one observer. Therefore, it is fair to expect that in larger health centers in terms of premises, CFFESD observers could miss some of the problems in terms of health services provided to the citizens.

Note: Above listed limitations refer to the data we are publishing today. Additional limitation will be published with the final report where new data will be published.
The final report will provide the Ministry of Health and the Fund for Mandatory Healthcare Insurance (FMHI) with recommendations and conclusions on each of these questions in order to be considered in designing future polices and decisions in primary healthcare, including decisions on distribution of budgetary (state) funding.
The project for the Monitoring of Health Care Centers is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Assist Impact and the technical assistance of National Democratic Institute (NDI).
Besides the assessment of the performance of health care centers, the project intends to empower Albanian citizens to enhance their monitoring capacities of different processes which will contribute to the increase of accountability of the Albanian democratic institutions.
CFFESD will prepare a research study with findings, conclusions and recommendations for improvement, which will be announced through social networks and electronic means, including the processed graphic data, which will be published on the official website of the CFFESD.
The Coalition for Free and Fair Elections and Sustainable Democracy (CFFESD) is an independent, non partisan Coalition founded to promote democratic governance in Albania through fostering citizen participation in public dialogue, advocacy and monitoring of public institutions and political processes. The Coalition consists of 25 organizations and hundreds of volunteers throughout the country.

The entire information on the progress of the project as well as the results of the scientific and research work shall be found at:
Website: www.kzln.org.al Facebook: Koalicioni per Zgjedhje te Lira e të Ndershme
Twitter: KZLN_CFFE
For more information, please contact:
Mirela Arqimandriti
Team Leader of the Project "Monitoring of the Health Centers in Albania"
Executive Director of the Gender Alliance for Development Center
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel: 00355682059
Address: Rr "Abdyl Frasheri", P.10 / 1, shk.1, ap.3, Tirana