Abstract:
Background: Governing body is responsible to provide strategic leadership at facility level. The facility governing body is committed to create and maintaining a strong bond between the health center and the community it serves. This governing body has the primary authority and responsibility for patient care, overall quality of service and on-going capability of the health center. To realize this, the introduction of health care financing has been introduced in Ethiopia since 1998 nationally. Good health facility governance is characterized by responsiveness and accountability; an open and transparent policy process; participatory engagement of citizens; and operational capacity of government to plan, manage, and regulate policy and service delivery. Nevertheless the performance of this governing body is not well documented in Ethiopia Objective: the aim of this study was to assess the operational capacity of health center governing body and management teams, Methodology: Descriptive qualitative method was employed. Semi Structured questionnaire was used to interview management and governing body members of six health centers selected from sokoru woreda. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with purposively selected health extension workers, health center staffs, community leaders and health managers from Woreda and Zonal Health office. Results: - More than 15 (62.5%) of respondents indicated that they were concerned about the unclear authority of the health center governing body. Some expressed boundary problems with the health center management and other respondents emphasized the boundary problems with the woreda health office. The ambiguity in authority was apparent in statements about decisions concerning financial incentives for the staff, handling ethical issues, drug procurement, corrective action for employees, these result was supported by study conducted in Ethiopian hospitals. Conclusion and Recommendation: These qualitative results were suggested that strengthening governing body to perform essential responsibilities may result in improved health center performance. Recommendation: The performance of the governing body would be enhanced by ensuring proper selection, constitution, capacitation, integration and interaction with other institutions must be conducted.