Investing in Change: The Ilula-Minnesota International Medical Conference
Global Health Ministries has been a key sponsor for the Ilula-Minnesota International Medical Conference for a number of years. Held in Iringa, Tanzania, in 2025, this gathering brought together doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and administrators from dozens of southern Tanzania Christian hospitals, along with medical teams from the United States, to talk about healthcare advancements and share knowledge to create lasting change. I was honored to be a part of this conference as a consultant from GHM.
Hospital administrator breakout session
The first day of the conference focused on a quality improvement model and tools such as pareto, run, and flow charts. Most participants were new to the methodology. Key themes included keeping it simple, starting small and expanding, recognizing that all improvement requires change, and viewing all work as a process.
On the second day, I led a break-out session for the administrators — attended by approximately 30 individuals. We chose topics that were highly relevant to all the hospitals, such as competition, insurance denials, compliance with electronic medical records, new streams of revenue, customer care and quality improvement.
Competition is recent in Tanzania, especially in rural areas. The government has built health care facilities throughout the country, often close to existing faith-based health facilities. These government facilities are new and fully staffed due to the government’s higher salaries and reported lax management style.
We discussed how faith-based facilities have a competitive advantage because the community trusts them, and they offer prayer to patients, families, and staff. We focused on using this new competition to improve care and service to the community. Safe-Care is an internationally accredited standard for resource-restricted settings. As members of the Christian Social Services Commission, a SafeCare self-assessment tool is available free of charge to the hospitals. Many of them believe they will try this new tool.
Participants shared examples of new revenue streams they were exploring, like adding specialty doctor services, reducing the amount of denials from the claims submitted to the National Health Insurance Fund, and producing agricultural products such as maize, trees, sunflowers, and goats.
The Ilula-Minnesota International Medical Conference provided a valuable platform for knowledge exchange, networking, and innovation, paving the way for a more collaborative and resilient global health community.