2nd Outcome Measurement and Reporting Conference (OMRC)

The 2nd Outcome Measurement and Reporting Conference (OMRC) will be held virtually from 16-17 September.

The OMRC dialogue platform was set up last year with the sole objective of fostering dialogue and discussion about how outcome measurement and reporting can help improve patient care in Southern Africa. It is hoped that the dialogues organised through the platform will progress the level of healthcare measurement in Southern Africa and improve patient care.

Background to OMRC?

The idea to convene the OMRC dialogue platform stemmed from three concerns.

Firstly, despite the Health Market Inquiry (HMI) final report being published several years ago (September 2019) that listed an OMR framework as critical to our health system, no meaningful progress has been made to develop a national OMR framework and/or convene any national OMR projects.

Secondly, the complacency and belief amongst many stakeholders that NHI is coming and at the “wave of this magic wand” the nation’s healthcare problems will be sorted out. NHI is unlikely to be a “silver bullet” or “wonder drug” that will sort out our health systems.

While additional financing can improve health systems, this will only happen if expenditure on scarce resources is used effectively. OMR needs to play a prominent role in monitoring resource use and resource allocation.

Thirdly, that experts in OMR seem to agree that outcome measurement must be driven by clinical practitioners and must not be subject to government interference and commercial influence so that if we wait for government and/or funders to start the process, clinical practitioners will not be able to drive and control the OMR process.

OMRC’s target audience

The OMRC dialogue platform is targeted at clinical practitioners.

We must never forget that without clinical practitioners we have no health system. Without clinical practitioners, patient care will suffer.

We have to ensure that the working conditions for clinical practitioners remain conducive of professional practice.

We have to ensure that clinical practitioners are recognised and rewarded. Stakeholders need to be reminded that without clinical practitioners there is no health system.

But that said, as clinical practitioners, we have a responsibility to build a health system that works for us and our patients. We have the responsibility to improve the system. We need to be part of the solution and take charge of improving patient care.

Put differently, we need to identify potholes and fix them. Those potholes that we can’t fix ourselves need to be escalated to the agencies responsible with demands for action.

We should not be complicit in allowing potholes to jeopardise the health of the nation. That said, we cannot afford not to be activists in this regard.

?Message from the OMRC conveners

We look forward to working with all clinical practitioners, in a multidisciplinary fashion, using the OMRC dialogue platform to identify important system challenges and work collaboratively to fix these challenges and improve patient care.

We aim to keep the OMRC platform free from political interference and commercial influence, this will ensure we can debate without any concern about political or sponsor sensitivities.

As conveners, it is our belief that clinical practitioners must drive the OMR process. The OMRC platform must belong to the clinical practitioners, and we hope the platform is used by practitioners to take Southern African health forward using OMR.

It is time for practitioners to “own the dialogue” and ensure our health system delivers the care needed by our patients.