The feasibility and acceptance of competency-based maternal neonatal referral system of the SISRUTE applications in Indonesia

Since 2016, Indonesia has employed the SISRUTE, an online health referral tool for recommending patients from one medical center to another. A new feature will be introduced in 2021–2022, implementing the idea of a competency-based referral system for mothers (maternal) and newborns (neonatal). Referral senders can use this tool to locate hospitals that are equipped to treat patients and are willing to accept patients. The goal of this study is to gather and examine preliminary data on the acceptability and viability of using the competency-based features on the SISRUTE application by health professionals who are participating in the referral system. Users of the application for maternal and infant referrals who had been referred by their patients and had been using the features for a year qualified as respondents for this study. Purposive sampling was utilized to choose the sample, along with in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and data from a questionnaire survey. The 15 user respondents, five focus group discussions, and survey data from 428 samples were all thoroughly interviewed. The analysis method employs a qualitative descriptive phenomenological approach. The analysis’s findings indicate that the competency-based referral feature on the SISRUTE application has the necessary qualities to be used as a system to address maternal neonatal referral patient issues and is user-acceptable. The difficulty results from a corresponding requirement for extra training to improve users’ understanding and proficiency in using the features.