Abstract:
Background: In Kenya, Public procurement is considered to be very instrumental in the
development of the Kenyan economy. E-procurement is one of the medium term
objectives which were to be implemented by June 2007, however its adoption among
state corporations has been alarmingly very slow and Kenya still considers ICT as a key
pillar in the success of vision 2030 which aims at transforming the country into an
industrialized nation by the year 2030.
Objectives: The broad objective was to assess the implementation of e-procurement
practices among public hospitals in Nairobi County. It was guided by four specific
objectives; to assess the extent of use, describe the challenges, benefits, and factors affecting
implementation of e-procurement among public health hospitals in Nairobi County.
Methodology: The study employed a descriptive cross sectional research design and the
study population consisted of the permanent staff working within the NHIF accredited
public hospitals that provided both outpatient and inpatient services in Nairobi County. The
study included all the staff working in Procurement, Finance, Clinical Service and
Administration departments within the hospitals. Data was collected using a semi structured
questionnaire.
Data analysis was then done using SPSS with the main analysis methods being frequencies,
mean, standard deviation, factor analysis and multivariate linear regression. Factor
Analysis which is a multivariate statistical procedure, was used to test how well the
measured variables represent the number of constraints. Multiple regression analysis
was used to estimate the relationship between a dependent variable and independent
variable and bivariate linear regression was used to analyse the factors to establish their
significance towards e-procurement implementation.
Results: The results shown that implementation of e-procurement was low. A total of 306
respondents were included in the study. Pumwani Maternity hospital (n=41, 38%) reported
that it had adopted e-procurement moderately, while Mbagathi and Mama Lucy reported
very low implementation (n=17, 17.7%) and (n=15, 14.7%) respectively. Pumwani was the
only hospital that had adopted Integrated Financial Management Information System
(IFMIS).8 factors were identified to affect e-procurement implementation and they
included: Perceived benefits, Attitude, Training, Acceptability and Management support.
Through multivariate analysis, training was the only statistically significant factor. The
highly ranked benefit was, improving the standardization and streamlining of procurement
processes (mean=4.10±0.92), while the highest ranked challenge was, top management
leadership and support (mean=2.55±1.37) Corruption, fraud, cartels, collusion and rigging
was ranked the least of benefits
Conclusion: Implementation of e-procurement within public hospitals in Nairobi County is
low, with Pumwani hospital being the only county hospital having adopted IFMIS. Though
there were other factors identified, training was the greatest factor influencing
implementation of e-procurement. Top management support was ranked the highest
challenge affecting its implementation
Recommendations: Since training and top management support play a major role in
adoption of e-procurement, focus on developing a training programme for staff and
management should be initiated. Since some hospitals have not yet adopted IFMIS, studies
should be carried regularly to identify the leading challenge at each phase of e-procurement
implementation to hasten the process. It was suggested that since the present study focused
on public hospitals in Nairobi County, future studies should consider expanding the scope
to include other counties. Future studies should also consider expanding the scope to include
the moderating variables like firm size and firm age.