Tracking Rural Health Facility Financial Data in Resource-Limited Settings: A Case Study from Rwanda

Health Informatics
December 15, 2025
By
Chunling Lu, Sandy Tsai ,John Ruhumuriza, Grace Umugiraneza, Solange Kandamutsa, Phillip P. Salvatore, Zibiao Zhang, Agnes Binagwaho, Fidele Ngabo

Abstract

  • Tracking financial data for rural health facilities is difficult in low-income countries because of unstandardized accounting practices and the absence of effective health financial information tracking systems.
  • Poor-quality financial data hinders monitoring and evaluation of health facility performance.
  • We present a five-step procedure developed for gathering financial data from 21 health centers in two rural districts of Rwanda.
  • The five-step procedure generated financial data with internal consistency and a low percentage of reports of “missing” for in-kind support (donated goods and services). In-kind support (mainly medicine and equipment) accounted for a large proportion of the total expenditure of health centers.
  • We report challenges faced by the project and make suggestions for how Rwanda’s national web-based financial data collection system can be improved.
  • Knowledge gained from the Rwanda field experience may inform other low-income countries on how to establish an information system to track health facility financial data.
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