Scheduling & Organization

Name: Marvin Arnold

Position: Management Systems Coordinator

With CCHIPs Since: August 2010

As with most activities, using basic organization and planning skills can drastically boost the efficiency of a health center. Particularly within Management Systems, CCHIPs places a heavy emphasis on this issue.  We work with the pharmacy to organize their drugs and plan ahead to prevent stock outages. We address the data manager’s needs to keep an organized archive of health center data and schedule time for regular data entry. The accountant has monthly payment deadlines and binders full of receipts for which we help develop ways to keep track of. Lastly, we support the Titulaire and managers in their planning of all health center activities. Despite our emphasis on scheduling and organization, CCHIPs doesn’t teach any groundbreaking techniques to help these stakeholders. Our solutions are focused on simple but consistent changes in behavior.

Although we are currently collecting empirical evidence to analyze the benefits of these trainings, anecdotally, they have been a huge success. For example, at Shingiro, we recently helped motivate the data manager to organize all of her data on loose paper into folders. Since then, she has frequently noted how much quicker she is able to find the right documents.

With all this success in mind, a few weeks ago I began to realize that, in my own life, I am not using the best planning or organization. While this realization is motivating me to take some steps to improve, it eludes to a bigger issue. As an organization, CCHIPs can never forget the reality of the situation we are working in. Personally I know that, in an effort to formalize my training procedures, I sometimes over-idealize the process. Moving forward, I must incorporate the human aspect into my trainings to a greater extent. How can I expect someone to adopt good habits I struggle with myself? How can I better demonstrate the long term advantages of certain behavior to the staff when so many more pressing short term issues arise in their lives every day? While I search for answers, I will continue to be inspired by the ability of the health center staff to use the trainings we give and organize themselves – usually better than I could.

Best Meal of The Week: Normally, I am not a fan of hotel food, but buffet dinner at La Palme Hotel Monday night was amazing!

News of the week: CCHIPs’ first Management Systems Coordinator, Zack Scott is headed back to the U.S. on Saturday to start work at Oliver Wyman. He has been with CCHIPs for two years and has made a huge impact on the organization. We are celebrating his time with us on Friday and look forward to making the best out of this loss.