Summary

Jacaranda Health is a Kenya-based social enterprise that combines business and clinical innovations to create a fully self-sustaining and scalable chain of maternity clinics. The clinics provide affordable, high-quality maternal and child health services to poor urban women.

Program goals

Jacaranda aims to become a global innovation laboratory, combining business and clinical innovations to lead change in the health sector, and hopes to change the way maternity care is provided for over one million poor women each year in urban East Africa.

Key program components

As of January 2014, Jacaranda operates two maternity hospitals in peri-urban Nairobi and plans to scale across East Africa by 2019 in order to provide high-quality and affordable maternity care in areas where low-income women otherwise lack access to respectful obstetrics, safe delivery, family planning, and postnatal care. Jacaranda intends to continue sharing its model for replication among other service delivery providers. Jacaranda’s model proves that low-cost interventions to reduce maternal and newborn mortality are feasible and effective.

Jacaranda is integrating clinical, business, and technological innovations: Financial savings programs to facilitate accessibility, mobile phone communication to encourage positive health-seeking behaviors, and quality improvement systems to standardize the model. Community mobilizers help build the brand and create a direct link with patients through community-based marketing.

At Jacaranda, our goal is test and disseminate practical facility-based approaches to create a new generation of nursing leaders who are strong, patient-centered managers..

Nurse Training: Jacaranda is deeply invested in enhancing its nurses’ skills and performance as well as setting a new standard for nursing care. They actively track individual performance and knowledge gaps through medical records and on-the-job assessments. They train their nurses to be strong leaders and managers, from handling obstetric emergencies to running clinical case reviews and quality initiatives. They are creating a clear career ladder to keep nurses moving up and growing their capacity, and work with expert clinical educators and faculty to design dynamic continuing medical training for their nurses that include hard and soft skills.

Their goal is for their nurses to provide all clinical care, while patient care assistants (nurse aides) provide non-clinical care and community health workers (CHWs) manage home visits and client education.

Information and Communication Technology: Jacaranda uses a mobile phone system to input client data and track health trends. When clients go home, they get customized health tips and scheduling reminders through SMS. They distribute patient satisfaction surveys through mobile phones that give valuable information about how to improve the care. Clients can also call a 24-hour Jacaranda customer care hotline. They also have a mobile payment option, MamaKiba (meaning “MotherSavings”), to enable mobile pre-payment service.

Quality Improvement: -Evidence-based protocols/tools such as checklists and evidence-based algorithms to make care more systematic -Regular clinical case reviews with staff to discuss challenges, lessons, and insights -Measuring impact through a mobile phone database and EMR to track performance. -Building decision support tools into electronic health record systems to help nurses manage care in emergencies and increase adherence to obstetric protocols.