Limitations are not their boundaries

They are so amazing!!!
Every moment that we spent to meet and connect is so precious, and fun.

Who they are

They are the teams from 6 SUMII clinic partners who received fundings from USAID. The 6 clinics reside in 6 different cities in Indonesia, they are YKB Clinic in Jakarta Utara, Gang Sadar LPPSLH Clinic in Purwokerto, Griya ASA Clinic in Semarang, Keluarga Kita Clinic in Batam, Wisma Terpadu Cendrawasih Clinic in Jayapura, and Kalvari Clinic in Wamena.

Angsamerah was so lucky to get this kind of opportunity to know and build partnerships with them in order to create useful outcomes. Even when the partnership within this SUM II project will be ended, we agreed to continue living our dreams, walking side by side to accomplish them.

Formally, this partnership was started within the scope of Angsamerah and USAID’s partnership through the SUMII program. Within this program, SUMII team appreciated Angsamerah Institution’s competence and trusted us to be one of the capable local institution to deliver technical assistances in order to improve healthcare quality. This includes a comprehensive dan sustainable sexual and reproductive healthcare, as well as HIV prevention and care, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) for key affected population in private clinic settings. It was such a joy and honour for Angsamerah to be handed this kind of responsibility.

Why are they “AMAZING”?

They are amazing because of their dedication to keep delivering the best health care services within various of challenges that they face on daily basis.

It is very inspiring to see how they deal with such challenges. The pressure for delivering high quality and humanistic healthcare within the society is so high, while the availability of supporting resources is so limited.

We have seen it by ourselves that even though it is not easy for them to overcome their challenges, they are still solid and their spirit never dies. While receiving technical assistance for Angsamerah, they were still trying to keep the clinic running, with a continuing effort to make the best out of themselves.

Even after the technical assistance had been ended in February 2015, we are confident that they will continue their good works and even multiple their outcomes. Moreover, through this process they already acknowledged that they will always have colleagues and partnership with other institutions whom will always be ready to give supportive hands.

Fulfilling the expectation to create a high quality, friendly, and affordable healthcare: IS IT POSSIBLE?

We are used to confidently set a high standard for a high quality healthcare. “A high quality healthcare should provide, A, B, C, and so on.” It is a very good thing, however the visibility of the fulfillment is usually overlooked, especially if we only see it from the general perspective. This fulfillment would also be influenced by the availability of other supporting factors, especially if we are talking about healthcare in private sector.

Speaking from Angsamerah’s experience in the last past few years in creating the “Dream Clinic”, a clinic which delivers a comprehensive, high-quality, friendly, affordable, and sustainable economically in private sector, this is not an easy process.

Talking about creating the “Dream Clinic”, Angsamerah has learned that the challenges were not only coming from clinical aspects, but also from non-medical elements, such as; fulfilling clients’ need of a friendly clinic, the presence of motivated and professional staffs, efficient and effective management skills including marketing strategies, and other various factors.

In addition to the complexity of managing those crucial elements, in order to create a healthy primary healthcare service, the provider in private clinic should also face another common challenge: the ability on securing an investment capital, as demonstrated on; a) the process of creating a business development design, b) initiative; c) quality maintenance, and d) creating a plan for future growth and obtaining the investation funding.

All of those requirements created a situation where sustaining a healthcare in private sector would be a very expensive job for professionals, health advocates, or healthcare workers who wish to have a private practice or a healthy primary health clinic. “Healthy” here is defined as a business which not only be profitable for the sake of the provider, but also useful for patients and giving positive impact to society widely.

In order to survive, sometimes we should compromise several things, and sometimes the quality of clinical service would be put at stake. If in any case this would happen, then the relevant healthcare service would be “sick”.

However, through our process of learning each day identifying and solving problems, Angsamerah found some strategic ways to make the cost as low as possible without risking the quality and even improve it. With Angsamerah’s experience, we can share these findings to people who wish to open their private clinics and primary healthcare services without requiring them to learn the hard way.

We don’t want to give up, we always try to find a way to fullfill those needs as we believe that our mission will benefit for many people and it is a pleasant feeling to see how each step is being completed. We, Angsamerah, believe those missions are also their driving force to keep on fighting for their dreams.

Angsamerah wishes that other healthcare advocates and providers will continue to see us as one of their colleagues in order to work together in ensuring the growth of high quality, friendly, and affordable primary healthcare services, especially related to sexual health, HIV, and drugs issues in Indonesia.

3 months of partnership with them is a fantastic experience, why?

Because we learned together, took action according to our specialised services and the resources that we have. We all showed significant results, supported, appreciated, and helped each other as a team. Various of significant elements were addressed. TOTALLY AWESOME!!! Moreover, we had this opportunity to share our dreams and supported each other in order to achieve them. Their dreams were then manifested in a form of business plans.

It is a very pleasant and meaningful experience for Angsamerah team to see them proudly shared their dreams.

Dream is a powerful resource to start with.
It’s inside each of us.
No one can steal it, we just have to find and say it loud.

The magic number 7 and 3
7 valuable lessons in 3 months:

1. We are not ALONE. There are people who care and continue to fight regardless of their limitations, they keep fighting to give their best to the community. Thoughout this process we made a bond, with hope that this bond will continue to grow and eventually drive other professionals and community as well.

2. Funding from bilateral project can be very useful as leverage funds to build local institutions towards independence, and push them towards innovative thinking. This project with SUM II, USAID really serves as a good example how to give local institutions their chances to design and be responsible on contributing their expertises to others. We hope that this kind of approach can be introduced to other forms of bilateral project.

3. Our partnership strategy, which has been built on this “WIN-WIN OUTPUT” value (means that both parties will gain benefits from the partnership) had been greatly reflected throughout these 3 months. I quoted this particular term from Marcell, Kalvari Clinic, Wamena, who spoke of this matter on the evaluation workshop, Februari 2015.

4. Even with limited funds and time, the process of technical assitance has been done very well when those three elements were implemented. The whole process became productive and fun.

5. Technical assistance was not limited only to clinical issue, but also balancely took account of other key areas, such as:

• Motivating the partner clinics or directly showing them the practical solution to do a simple and positive action with the available resources. This is a very significant outcome to motivate them to even achieve bigger plans, including their courage to think innovatively. This way, we can experience the impacts firsthand.
• The form of relation, communication, and coordination between mentors and clinic partners were monitored as well as held systematically and consistantly.
• The documentations of this process were actively promoted in social media. This would even multiply the impact and the spirit of participating parties.

6. Our multimethod assistance inspired them to deliver outcome and determined how to get them. These are several methods that we use during the mentoring process:

• Participants got to see firsthand about the system that was going on in Angsamerah
• In-class training which covered clinical and non-medical materials
• Participants were involved in determining their own expected outcomes, including the activities needed to achieve those outcomes. This gave participants their space to set their own priorities under our mentors’ guidance
• A comprehensive assistance was followed by mentoring straight to the clinic sites. It includes the strengthening of team’s character with the orietation to deliver results, medical competence and knowledge, management, and healthy business management.
• The development of individual profile, institutional profile, and their future goals, including to expand their networkings.

7. Professional involvement of the relevant and competent clinic partners, as well as their ability to lift up the partnership’s spirit, which optimized the on-going partnership. Their professional presence lifted up the contributing team and opened even more opportunities for all of us. This professional involvement concluded through our evaluation workshop, where on the first day all clinics presented their progress on the ongoing activities, especially on the clinics’ progress after receiving our mentoring sessions. They focused on what kind of mentoring that they received, also how this mentoring helped them to manage their clinics. After the discussion, participants received assistance on preparing them for their business plan presentation. This business plan had been presented on the second day, where professionals from key institutions were invited and gave their thoughts.

The following contains a couple of sentences from four professionals who were invited:

Ria Ningsih (Executive Secretary at Indonesia Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM)):

Ramdani Sirait (Executive Director, Indonesian Business Coalition on AIDS (IBCA)):

Nurjanah Sulaiman (Staff of STDs and HIV Department, Ministry of Health):

Dr. Kemal Siregar, MPH (Secretary of National AIDS Commission):

The END? Does it really end here?

Referring to our the mutual agreement between Angsamerah and 6 clinics, then the technical assistance project in partnership with SUMII-USAID has been ended, effective February 2015. However, our partnership will continue to be held informally.

From our partnership project in partnership with SUMII-USAID, Angsamerah learned that there is no reason of limitation to give up!

Our partnership who has been held for 3 months will be maintained and improved consistenty with strategic ways. Through Angsamerah’s other projects, we will always socialize the 6 clinics’ dreams and help them to make them come true with our best capacities. Effective communication with KPAN, IBCA, Department of Health, CCM, and other relevant organizations will always be our priority and this process will always be acknowledged with our friends from 6 clinics.

SUMII-USAID and Angsamerah partnership is such a special one, and Angsamerah will independently continue to socialize this strategic approach which has been done in this SUMII-USAID project.

We can’t be thankful enough of the good words that have been spoken by our friends from 6 clinics throughout this process. One of the inspiring one comes from our friend, Marcell Kooijmans from Kalvari Clinic, Wamena, Papua, on our technical assistance evaluation workshop.

Cheers for the better healthcare service in Indonesia.
Everyone deserves his and her right to receive the best healthcare service possible and every healthcare providers need a healthy environment in order to give their best.