Assessing The Process Of Community Participation In A Rural Hospital In Nepal

The aim of this study is to assess the process of forming and operating a community advisory committee for Bayalpata Hospital, a 15-bed rural hospital in Achham, Nepal. A baseline survey was administered in seventeen wards (communities with about 50 households) to assess the community\u27s demographics, priorities in health service utilization, and accountability, ownership and transparency of the hospital. Three wards were chosen to implement and assess the program. The program was assessed on three fronts: data recording, representation and responsiveness of the Hospital. The baseline survey showed persistent low literacy, high poverty and segregation by caste in all surveyed villages. The process indicators for the program underscored the challenges in data collection and recording but showed excellent representation of females and dalits. In addition to evaluating the program in community participation using process indicators, this study provides a descriptive assessment of a model in implementing a scalable mechanism to collect feedback from the most marginalized members of the community