Assessing the implementation of electronic procurement (e-procurement) practices among public hospitals in Nairobi County Kenya

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.