Availability of basic infection control items and personal protection equipment in 7948 health facilities in eight low- and middle-income countries: Evidence from national health system surveys.

Background: Hundreds of millions of people become infected globally every year while seeking care in health facilities that lack basic needs like infection control measures and personal protective equipment (PPE). We aimed to evaluate the availability of infection control items and PPE in eight low- and middle-income countries and identify disparities in the availability of those items. Methods: In this study, we combined publicly available nationally representative cross-sectional health system surveys (Service Provision Assessments by the Demographic and Health Survey Programme) conducted in eight countries between 2013 and 2018: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal, and Tanzania. The availability of infection control items was evaluated using a list of six items (a waste receptacle, a sharps container, disinfectant, single-use disposable or auto-disposable syringes, soap and running water, or an alcohol-based hand rub, and guidelines for standard precautions). PPE includes four items: gloves, medical masks, gowns, and eye protection. We considered these items available in a facility if they were observed in general outpatient areas or any service-specific area (i.e. delivery room). Results: We analysed data from 7948 health facilities (694 hospitals and 7254 health centres/clinics). Overall, among the infection control items and PPE, most surveyed facilities had high availability of single-use disposable or auto-disposable syringes (91.40%) and latex gloves (92.56%). Of infection control measures, guidelines for infection control were the least available during the survey, with the lowest (6.15%) in Nepal and the highest (68.18%) in Malawi. Of the PPE items, eye protection was the least available during the survey, with the lowest (5.4% in Senegal) and the highest (28.17%) in Haiti. Only 1567 (19.71%) facilities looked to have all the basic infection control materials, and 1023 (12.87%) of the analysed facilities possessed all of the PPE. Within the same country, the availability of items varied more between hospitals and health centres/clinics than between them. Conclusions: All eight of our study countries experience shortages of the most fundamental standard precaution items to avert infection. Steps must be taken in each of these countries to reduce inadequacies and disparities and enhance efficiency in the conversion of health-system inputs into the facility's availability of standard precaution items for infection control - to curb the risk of infectious disease transmission.

Inequalities in health system coverage and quality: a cross-sectional survey of four Latin American countries.

The premise of health as a human right in Latin America has been challenged by health system fragmentation, quality gaps, a growing burden of chronic disease, sociopolitical upheaval, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We characterised inequities in health system quality in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. We did a cross-sectional telephone survey with up to 1250 adults in each country. We created binary outcomes in coverage, user experience, system competence, and confidence in the system and calculated the slope index of inequality by income and education. Although access to care was high, only a third of respondents reported having a high-quality source of care and 25% of those with mental health needs had those needs met. Two-thirds of adults were able to access relevant preventive care and 42% of older adults were screened for cardiovascular disease. Telehealth access, communication and autonomy in most recent visit, reasonable waiting times, and receiving preventive health checks showed inequalities favouring people with a high income. In Uruguay, inequality between government and social security services explained a substantial proportion of disparities in preventive health access. In other study countries, inequalities were also substantial within government and social security subsectors. Essential health system functions are unequal in these four Latin American countries.

Design and evaluation of a digital health intervention with proactive follow-up by nurses to improve healthcare and outcomes for patients with breast cancer in Mexico: protocol for a randomised clinical trial.

INTRODUCTION: Nearly 30 000 Mexican women develop breast cancer annually, frequently presenting unmet supportive care needs. In high-income countries, incorporating electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) into cancer care has demonstrated potential for increasing patient-centred care and reducing unmet needs. No such ePRO interventions have been implemented in Mexico. This paper presents the study protocol for designing and evaluating an ePRO digital health application combined with proactive follow-up by nurses. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We designed a two-component intervention for women receiving breast cancer treatment: a responsive web application for monitoring ePROs and clinical algorithms guiding proactive follow-up by nurses. We will conduct a pilot test of the intervention with 50 patients with breast cancer for 6 weeks to assess feasibility and adjust the application. We will conduct a parallel arm randomised controlled trial assigning 205 patients each to intervention and control in one of Mexico's largest public oncology hospitals. The intervention will be provided for 6 months, with additional 3 months of post-intervention observation. The control group will receive usual healthcare and a list of breast cancer information sources. Women diagnosed with stages I, II or III breast cancer who initiate chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy will be invited to participate. The primary study outcome will be supportive care needs; secondary outcomes include global quality of life and breast symptoms. Information on the outcomes will be obtained through web-based self-administered questionnaires collected at baseline, 1, 3, 6 and 9 months. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The National Research and Ethics Committees of the Mexican Institute of Social Security approved the study (R-2021-785-059). Participants will sign an informed consent form prior to their inclusion. Findings will be disseminated through a policy brief to the local authorities, a webinar for patients, publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at national and international conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05925257.

A small area model to assess temporal trends and sub-national disparities in healthcare quality.

Monitoring subnational healthcare quality is important for identifying and addressing geographic inequities. Yet, health facility surveys are rarely powered to support the generation of estimates at more local levels. With this study, we propose an analytical approach for estimating both temporal and subnational patterns of healthcare quality indicators from health facility survey data. This method uses random effects to account for differences between survey instruments; space-time processes to leverage correlations in space and time; and covariates to incorporate auxiliary information. We applied this method for three countries in which at least four health facility surveys had been conducted since 1999 - Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania - and estimated measures of sick-child care quality per WHO Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) guidelines at programmatic subnational level, between 1999 and 2020. Model performance metrics indicated good out-of-sample predictive validity, illustrating the potential utility of geospatial statistical models for health facility data. This method offers a way to jointly estimate indicators of healthcare quality over space and time, which could then provide insights to decision-makers and health service program managers.

The road to recovery: an interrupted time series analysis of policy intervention to restore essential health services in Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Recovery of health services disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic represents a significant challenge in low- and middle-income countries. In April 2021, the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), which provides health care to 68.5 million people, launched the National Strategy for Health Services Recovery (Recovery policy). The study objective was to evaluate whether the Recovery policy addressed COVID-related declines in maternal, child health, and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) services. Methods: We analysed the data of 35 IMSS delegations from January 2019 to November 2021 on contraceptive visits, antenatal care consultations, deliveries, caesarean sections, sick children's consultations, child vaccination, breast and cervical cancer screening, diabetes and hypertension consultations, and control. We focused on the period before (April 2020 - March 2021) and during (April 2021 - November 2021) the Recovery policy and used an interrupted time series design and Poisson Generalized Estimating Equation models to estimate the association of this policy with service use and outcomes and change in their trends. Results: Despite the third wave of the pandemic in 2021, service utilization increased in the Recovery period, reaching (at minimum) 49% of pre-pandemic levels for sick children's consultations and (at maximum) 106% of pre-pandemic levels for breast cancer screenings. Evidence for the Recovery policy role was mixed: the policy was associated with increased facility deliveries (IRR = 1.15, 95%CI = 1.11-1.19) with a growing trend over time (IRR = 1.04, 95%CI = 1.03-1.05); antenatal care and child health services saw strong level effects but decrease over time. Additionally, the Recovery policy was associated with diabetes and hypertension control. Services recovery varied across delegations. Conclusions: Health service utilization and NCDs control demonstrated important gains in 2021, but evidence suggests the policy had inconsistent effects across services and decreasing impact over time. Further efforts to strengthen essential health services and ensure consistent recovery across delegations are warranted.

Stability of healthcare quality measures for maternal and child services: Analysis of the continuous service provision assessment of health facilities in Senegal, 2012-2018.

OBJECTIVE: High-quality healthcare is essential to ensuring maternal and newborn survival. Efficient measurement requires knowing how long measures of quality provide consistent insight for intended uses. METHODS: We used a repeated health facility assessment in Senegal to calculate structural and process quality of antenatal care (ANC), delivery and child health services in facilities assessed 2 years apart. We tested agreement of quality measures within facilities and regions. We estimated how much input-adjusted and process quality-adjusted coverage measures changed for each service when calculated using quality measurements from the same facilities measured 2 years apart. RESULTS: Over 6 waves of continuous surveys, 628 paired assessments were completed. Changes at the facility level were substantial and often positive, but inconsistent. Structural quality measures were moderately correlated (0.40-0.69) within facilities over time, more so in hospitals; correlation was <0.20 for process measures based on direct observation of ANC and child visits. Most measures were more strongly correlated once averaged to regions; process quality of child services was not (-0.32). Median relative difference in national-adjusted coverage estimates was 6.0%; differences in subnational estimates were largest for process quality of child services (19.6%). CONCLUSION: Continuous measures of structural quality demonstrated consistency at regional levels and in higher level facilities over 2 years; results for process measures were mixed. Direct observation of child visits provided inconsistent measures over time. For other measures, linking population data with health facility assessments from up to 2 years prior is likely to introduce modest measurement error in adjusted coverage estimates.

Measuring Organizational Readiness for Implementing Change in Primary Care Facilities in Rural Bushbuckridge, South Africa.

Meaningful gains in health outcomes require successful implementation of evidence-based interventions. Organizations such as health facilities must be ready to implement efficacious interventions, but tools to measure organizational readiness have rarely been validated outside of high-income settings. We conducted a pilot study of the organizational readiness to implement change (ORIC) measure in public primary care facilities serving Bushbuckridge Municipality in South Africa in early 2019. We administered the 10-item ORIC to 54 nurses and lay counsellors in 9 facilities to gauge readiness to implement the national Central Chronic Medicine Dispensing and Distribution (CCMDD) programme intended to declutter busy health facilities. We used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify factor structure. We used Cronbach alpha and intraclass correlation (ICC) to assess reliability at the individual and facility levels. To assess validity, we drew on existing data from routine clinic monitoring and a 2018 quality assessment to test the correlation of ORIC with facility resources, value of CCMDD programme, and better programme uptake and service quality. Six items from the ORIC loaded onto a single factor with Cronbach's alpha of 0.82 and ICC of 0.23. While facility ORIC score was not correlated with implementation of CCMDD, higher scores were correlated with facility resources, perceived value of the CCMDD program, patient satisfaction with wait time, and greater linkage to care following positive HIV testing. The study is limited by measuring ORIC after programme implementation. The findings support the relevance of ORIC, but identify a need for greater adaptation and validation of the measure.

Disruption in essential health services in Mexico during COVID-19: an interrupted time series analysis of health information system data.

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted health systems around the world. The objectives of this study are to estimate the overall effect of the pandemic on essential health service use and outcomes in Mexico, describe observed and predicted trends in services over 24 months, and to estimate the number of visits lost through December 2020. METHODS: We used health information system data for January 2019 to December 2020 from the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), which provides health services for more than half of Mexico's population-65 million people. Our analysis includes nine indicators of service use and three outcome indicators for reproductive, maternal and child health and non-communicable disease services. We used an interrupted time series design and linear generalised estimating equation models to estimate the change in service use and outcomes from April to December 2020. Estimates were expressed using average marginal effects on the risk ratio scale. RESULTS: The study found that across nine health services, an estimated 8.74 million patient visits were lost in Mexico. This included a decline of over two thirds for breast and cervical cancer screenings (79% and 68%, respectively), over half for sick child visits and female contraceptive services, approximately one-third for childhood vaccinations, diabetes, hypertension and antenatal care consultations, and a decline of 10% for deliveries performed at IMSS. In terms of patient outcomes, the proportion of patients with diabetes and hypertension with controlled conditions declined by 22% and 17%, respectively. Caesarean section rate did not change. CONCLUSION: Significant disruptions in health services show that the pandemic has strained the resilience of the Mexican health system and calls for urgent efforts to resume essential services and plan for catching up on missed preventive care even as the COVID-19 crisis continues in Mexico.

Effective coverage of nutrition interventions across the continuum of care in Bangladesh: insights from nationwide cross-sectional household and health facility surveys.

INTRODUCTION: Improving the impact of nutrition interventions requires adequate measurement of both reach and quality of interventions, but limited evidence exists on advancing coverage measurement. We adjusted contact-based coverage estimates, taking into consideration the inputs required to deliver quality nutrition services, to calculate input-adjusted coverage of nutrition interventions across the continuum of care from pregnancy through early childhood in Bangladesh. METHODS: We used data from the 2014 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys to assess use of maternal and child health services and the 2014 Service Provision Assessment to determine facility readiness to deliver nutrition interventions. Service readiness captured availability of nutrition-specific inputs (including human resources and training, equipment, diagnostics and medicines). Contact coverage was combined with service readiness to create a measure of input-adjusted coverage at the national and regional levels, across place of residence, and by maternal education and household socioeconomic quintiles. RESULTS: Contact coverage varied from 28% for attending at least four ANC visits to 38% for institutional delivery, 35% for child growth monitoring and 81% for sick child care. Facilities demonstrated incomplete readiness for nutrition interventions, ranging from 48% to 51% across services. Nutrition input-adjusted coverage was suboptimal (18% for ANC, 23% for institutional delivery, 20% for child growth monitoring and 52% for sick child care) and varied between regions within the country. Inequalities in input-adjusted coverage were large during ANC and institutional delivery (14-17 percentage points (pp) between urban and rural areas, 15 pp between low and high education, and 28-34 pp between highest and lowest wealth quintiles) and less variable for sick child care (<2 pp). CONCLUSION: Nutrition input-adjusted coverage was suboptimal and varied subnationally and across the continuum of care in Bangladesh. Special efforts are needed to improve the reach as well as the quality of health and nutrition services to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Quality of clinical management of children diagnosed with malaria: A cross-sectional assessment in 9 sub-Saharan African countries between 2007-2018.

BACKGROUND: Appropriate clinical management of malaria in children is critical for preventing progression to severe disease and for reducing the continued high burden of malaria mortality. This study aimed to assess the quality of care provided to children under 5 diagnosed with malaria across 9 sub-Saharan African countries. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used data from the Service Provision Assessment (SPA) survey. SPAs are nationally representative facility surveys capturing quality of sick-child care, facility readiness, and provider and patient characteristics. The data set contained 24,756 direct clinical observations of outpatient sick-child visits across 9 countries, including Uganda (2007), Rwanda (2007), Namibia (2009), Kenya (2010), Malawi (2013), Senegal (2013-2017), Ethiopia (2014), Tanzania (2015), and Democratic Republic of the Congo (2018). We assessed the proportion of children with a malaria diagnosis who received a blood test diagnosis and an appropriate antimalarial. We used multilevel logistic regression to assess facility and provider and patient characteristics associated with these outcomes. Subgroup analyses with the 2013-2018 country surveys only were conducted for all outcomes. Children observed were on average 20.5 months old and were most commonly diagnosed with respiratory infection (47.7%), malaria (29.7%), and/or gastrointestinal infection (19.7%). Among the 7,340 children with a malaria diagnosis, 32.5% (95% CI: 30.3%-34.7%) received both a blood-test-based diagnosis and an appropriate antimalarial. The proportion of children with a blood test diagnosis and an appropriate antimalarial ranged from 3.4% to 57.1% across countries. In the more recent surveys (2013-2018), 40.7% (95% CI: 37.7%-43.6%) of children with a malaria diagnosis received both a blood test diagnosis and appropriate antimalarial. Roughly 20% of children diagnosed with malaria received no antimalarial at all, and nearly 10% received oral artemisinin monotherapy, which is not recommended because of concerns regarding parasite resistance. Receipt of a blood test diagnosis and appropriate antimalarial was positively correlated with being seen at a facility with diagnostic equipment in stock (adjusted OR 3.67; 95% CI: 2.72-4.95) and, in the 2013-2018 subsample, with being seen at a facility with Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACTs) in stock (adjusted OR 1.60; 95% CI:1.04-2.46). However, even if all children diagnosed with malaria were seen by a trained provider at a facility with diagnostics and medicines in stock, only a predicted 37.2% (95% CI: 34.2%-40.1%) would have received a blood test and appropriate antimalarial (44.4% for the 2013-2018 subsample). Study limitations include the lack of confirmed malaria test results for most survey years, the inability to distinguish between a diagnosis of uncomplicated or severe malaria, the absence of other relevant indicators of quality of care including dosing and examinations, and that only 9 countries were studied. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we found that a majority of children diagnosed with malaria across the 9 surveyed sub-Saharan African countries did not receive recommended care. Clinical management is positively correlated with the stocking of essential commodities and is somewhat improved in more recent years, but important quality gaps remain in the countries studied. Continued reductions in malaria mortality will require a bigger push toward quality improvements in clinical care.

Quality of clinical assessment and child mortality: a three-country cross-sectional study.

This analysis describes specific gaps in the quality of health care in Central Africa and assesses the association between quality of clinical care and mortality at age 2-59 months. Regionally representative facility and household surveys for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Central African Republic were collected between 2012 and 2016. These data are novel in linking facilities with households in their catchment area. Compliance with diagnostic and danger sign protocols during sick-child visits was observed by trained assessors. We computed facility- and district-level compliance indicators for patients aged 2-59 months and used multivariate multi-level logistic regression models to estimate the association between clinical assessment quality and mortality at age 2-59 months in the catchment areas of the observed facilities. A total of 13 618 live births were analysed and 1818 sick-child visits were directly observed and used to rate 643 facilities. Eight percent of observed visits complied with 80% of basic diagnostic protocols, and 13% of visits fully adhered to select general danger sign protocols. A 10% greater compliance with diagnostic protocols was associated with a 14.1% (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 95% CI: 0.025-0.244) reduction in the odds of mortality at age 2-59 months; a 10% greater compliance with select general danger sign protocols was associated with a 15.3% (aOR 95% CI: 0.058-0.237) reduction in the same odds. The results of this article suggest that compliance with recommended clinical protocols remains poor in many settings and improvements in mortality at age 2-59 months could be possible if compliance were improved.

Factors associated with positive user experience with primary healthcare providers in Mexico: a multilevel modelling approach using national cross-sectional data.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate factors associated with patient experience with primary care in a large public health system in Mexico and determine the amount of variability in experience attributable to facility-level and state-level factors. METHODS: We analysed cross-sectional 2016 national satisfaction survey data from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). Patient-level data were merged with facility-level data and information on poverty by state. We assessed general contextual effects and examined the relationship of patient, facility and state factors with four patient experience measures using random effects logistic regression. RESULTS: 25 745 patients' responses from 319 facilities were analysed. The majority experienced good communication (78%), the opportunity to share health concerns (91%) and resolution of doubts (85%). 29% of visits were rated as excellent. Differences between facilities and states accounted for up to 12% and 6% of the variation in patient experience, respectively. Inclusion of facility-level contextual effects improved model predictions by 8%-12%; models with facility random effects and individual covariates correctly predicted 64%-71% of individual outcomes. In adjusted models, larger patient population was correlated with worse reported communication, less opportunity to share concerns and less resolution of doubts. Men reported more positive communication; older individuals reported more positive communication and experiences overall, but less opportunity to share concerns; and more educated individuals were less likely to report positive communication but more likely to report resolution of doubts and overall positive experiences. Preventive care visits were rated higher than curative visits for resolution of doubts, but lower for opportunity to share concerns, and specific conditions were associated with better or worse reported experiences in some cases. CONCLUSION: Quality improvement efforts at IMSS facilities might bolster individual experiences with primary care, given that up to 12% of the variation in experience was attributable to facility-level differences. The relationship between individual characteristics and experience ratings reinforces the importance of patients' expectations of care and the potential for differential treatment by providers to impact experience.

Assessing health system performance: effective coverage at the Mexican Institute of Social Security.

Universal health coverage is a national priority in Mexico, with active efforts to expand public healthcare system access, increase financial protection and improve quality of care. We estimated effective coverage of multiple conditions within the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), which covers 62 million individuals. We identified routinely collected performance indicators at IMSS from 2016 related to use and quality of care for conditions avertable with high-quality healthcare; where candidate indicators were available, we quantified need for service from a population-representative survey and calculated effective coverage as proportion of individuals in need who experience potential health gains. We assessed subnational inequality across 32 states, and we weighted conditions by relative contribution to national disease burden to estimate composite effective coverage. Conditions accounting for 51% of healthcare-avertable disability-adjusted life years lost in Mexico could be assessed: antenatal care, delivery care, newborn care, childhood diarrhoea, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Estimated effective coverage ranged from a low of 27% for childhood diarrhoea to a high of 74% for newborn care. Substantial inequality in effective coverage existed between states, particularly for maternal and child conditions. Overall effective coverage of these six conditions in IMSS was 49% in 2016. Gaps in use and quality of care must be addressed to ensure good health for all in Mexico. Despite extensive monitoring of health status and services in Mexico, currently available data are inadequate to the task of fully and routinely assessing health system effective coverage. Leaders at IMSS and similar healthcare institutions must be more purposeful in planning the assessment of population need, utilization of care and quality impacts of care to enable linkage of these data and disaggregation by location or population sub-group. Only then can complex health systems be fairly and fully evaluated.

High quality health systems in the SDG era: Country-specific priorities for improving quality of care.

Hannah Leslie and co-authors discuss priorities in individual countries for health system reform.

Latent class analysis of the social determinants of health-seeking behaviour for delivery among pregnant women in Malawi.

INTRODUCTION: In the era of Sustainable Development Goals, reducing maternal and neonatal mortality is a priority. With one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world, Malawi has a significant opportunity for improvement. One effort to improve maternal outcomes involves increasing access to high-quality health facilities for delivery. This study aimed to determine the role that quality plays in women's choice of delivery facility. METHODS: A revealed-preference latent class analysis was performed with data from 6625 facility births among women in Malawi from 2013 to 2014. Responses were weighted for national representativeness, and model structure and class number were selected using the Bayesian information criterion. RESULTS: Two classes of preferences exist for pregnant women in Malawi. Most of the population 65.85% (95% CI 65.847% to 65.853%) prefer closer facilities that do not charge fees. The remaining third (34.15%, 95% CI 34.147% to 34.153%) prefers central hospitals, facilities with higher basic obstetric readiness scores and locations further from home. Women in this class are more likely to be older, literate, educated and wealthier than the majority of women. CONCLUSION: For only one-third of pregnant Malawian women, structural quality of care, as measured by basic obstetric readiness score, factored into their choice of facility for delivery. Most women instead prioritise closer care and care without fees. Interventions designed to increase access to high-quality care in Malawi will need to take education, distance, fees and facility type into account, as structural quality alone is not predictive of facility type selection in this population.

Measuring quality of care for all women and newborns: how do we know if we are doing it right? A review of facility assessment tools.

BACKGROUND: Ensuring quality of care during pregnancy and childbirth is crucial to improving health outcomes and reducing preventable mortality and morbidity among women and their newborns. In this pursuit, WHO developed a framework and standards, defining 31 quality statements and 352 quality measures to assess and improve quality of maternal and newborn care in health-care facilities. We aimed to assess the capacity of globally used, large-scale facility assessment tools to measure quality of maternal and newborn care as per the WHO framework. METHODS: We identified assessment tools through a purposive sample that met the following inclusion criteria: multicountry, facility-level, major focus on maternal and newborn health, data on input and process indicators, used between 2007 and 2017, and currently in use. We matched questions in the tools with 274 quality measures associated with inputs and processes within the WHO standards. We excluded quality measures relating to outcomes because these are not routinely measured by many assessment tools. We used descriptive statistics to calculate how many quality measures could be assessed using each of the tools under review. Each tool was assigned a 1 for fulfilling a quality measure based on the presence of any or all components as indicated in the standards. FINDINGS: Five surveys met our inclusion criteria: the Service Provision Assessment (SPA), developed for the Demographic and Health Surveys programme; the Service Availability and Readiness Assessment, developed by WHO; the Needs Assessment of Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care developed by the Averting Maternal Death and Disability programme at Columbia University; and the World Bank's Service Delivery Indicator (SDI) and Impact Evaluation Toolkit for Results Based Financing in Health. The proportion of quality measures covered ranged from 62% for the SPA to 12% for the SDI. Although the broadest tool addressed parts of each of the 31 quality statements, 68 (25%) of 274 input and process quality measures were not measured at all. Measures of health information systems and patient experience of care were least likely to be included. INTERPRETATION: Existing facility assessment tools provide a valuable way to assess quality of maternal and newborn care as one element within the national measurement toolkit. Guidance is clearly needed on priority measures and for better harmonisation across tools to reduce measurement burden and increase data use for quality improvement. Targeted development of measurement modules to address important gaps is a key priority for research. FUNDING: None.

Barriers and opportunities to improve the foundations for high-quality healthcare in the Mexican Health System.

This study aimed to describe the foundations for quality of care (QoC) in the Mexican public health sector and identify barriers to quality evaluation and improvement from the perspective of the QoC leaders of the main public health sector institutions: Ministry of Health (MoH), the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and the Institute of Social Security of State Workers (ISSSTE). We administered a semi-structured online questionnaire that gathered information on foundations (governance, health workforce, platforms, tools and population), evaluation and improvement activities for QoC; 320 leaders from MoH, IMSS and ISSSTE participated. We used thematic content and descriptive analyses to analyse the data. We found that QoC foundations, evaluation and improvement activities pose essential challenges for the Mexican health sector. Governance for QoC is weakly aligned across MoH, IMSS and ISSSTE. Each institution follows its own agenda of evaluation and improvement programmes and has distinct QoC indicators and information systems. The institutions share similar barriers to strengthening QoC: poor organizational structure at a facility level, scarcity of financial resources, lack of training in QoC for executive/managerial staff and health professionals and limited public participation. In conclusion, a stronger legal framework and policy dialogue is needed to foster governance by the MoH, to define and align health sector-wide QoC policies, and to set common goals and articulate QoC improvement actions among institutions. Robust QoC organizational structure with designated staff and clarity on their responsibilities should be established at all levels of healthcare. Investment is necessary to fund formal and in-service QoC training programmes for health professionals and to reinforce quality evaluation and improvement activities and quality information systems. QoC evaluation results should be available to healthcare providers and the population. Active public participation in the design and implementation of improvement initiatives should be strengthened.

Can India's primary care facilities deliver? A cross-sectional assessment of the Indian public health system's capacity for basic delivery and newborn services.

OBJECTIVES: To assess input and process capacity for basic delivery and newborn (intrapartum care hereafter) care in the Indian public health system and to describe differences in facility capacity between rural and urban areas and across states. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: Data from the nationally representative 2012-2014 District Level Household and Facility Survey, which includes a census of community health centres (CHC) and sample of primary health centres (PHC) across 30 states and union territories in India. PARTICIPANTS: 8536 PHCs and 4810 CHCs. OUTCOME MEASURES: We developed a summative index of 33 structural and process capacity items matching the Indian Public Health Standards for PHCs as a metric of minimum facility capacity for intrapartum care. We assessed differences in performance on this index across facility type and location. RESULTS: About 30% of PHCs and 5% of CHCs reported not offering any intrapartum care. Among those offering services, volumes were low: median monthly delivery volume was 8 (IQR=13) in PHCs and 41 (IQR=73) in CHCs. Both PHCs and CHCs failed to meet the national standards for basic intrapartum care capacity. Mean facility capacity was low in PHCs in both urban (0.64) and rural (0.63) areas, while in CHCs, capacity was slightly higher in urban areas (0.77vs0.74). Gaps were most striking in availability of skilled human resources and emergency obstetric services. Poor capacity facilities were more concentrated in the more impoverished states, with 37% of districts from these states receiving scores in the lowest third of the facility capacity index (<0.70), compared with 21% of districts otherwise. CONCLUSIONS: Basic intrapartum care capacity in Indian public primary care facilities is weak in both rural and urban areas, especially lacking in the poorest states with worst health outcomes. Improving maternal and newborn health outcomes will require focused attention to quality measurement, accountability mechanisms and quality improvement. Policies to address deficits in skilled providers and emergency service availability are urgently required.