Problem Area

There are several bottlenecks in the system, including:

• Multilevel entry by distinctive people: ASHA’s are themselves a primary source of health data. Information is passed on to the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM), who in turn sends it to the Primary Health Centre (PHC) where it is filed by a data entry operator. This multilevel handling of information sometimes leads to errors and delays in data reporting.
• Health Supervisors become data entry operators: Some of the data entry operators in the PHCs were appointed as Health Supervisors, who are supposed to solve the queries and provide supportive supervision to ASHAs. However, with time spent on performing data entry work at the PHCs, the supervision part of their work has increasingly taken a back seat.
• Making activity plans: ASHAs need to refer to the records regularly in order to fix next day’s visits with the beneficiaries. This is a cumbersome task that prevents many visits from occurring at the scheduled time.
• Timely incentives to ASHAs: Some ASHAs do not receive their monthly payments on time, leading to a lack of motivation and less interest in working more efficiently.
• Tracing and tracking the data entry point: Yet there has been no tracking and monitoring system capable of finding out whether the data given by the front-line workers is authentic or where it was recorded.