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In many low-income countries, the quality of public health care is so poor that individuals are not keen on using it – even if it costs little or is for free. To improve the utilization of health services, and to reduce inequality in health, planners, managers and clinicians must therefore strive to enhance and maintain good quality in health care provision.
To help its partners improve the quality of services provided by their healthcare systems, German Development Cooperation supports the following approaches:
- Systemic Quality Improvement (SQI): SQI is designed as an inspiring competition between health facilities aiming to first improve and then maintain their service quality. German Development Cooperation supports its partner institutions in introducing and managing standardised processes of self-assessment, participatory planning and benchmarking, peer evaluation and joint learning throughout the health facilities’ implementation of agreed improvement plans.
- Accreditation: In most partner countries, a national accreditation agency coordinates the assessment of participating health facilities and the accreditation of those who perform according to its approved standards. German Development Cooperation supports the development of national quality standards in accordance with those defined by international accreditation agencies. It provides capacity development for national accreditation agencies, for peer assessors/surveyors and for health facilities striving to reach and maintain the standards required for accreditation.
Selected readings from the Healthy DEvelopments portal
- Improving health care system-wide: Approaches in Morocco and Yemen (Case Study, GHPC, 2012)
- Quality Management for Hospitals in Viet Nam (Article, Healthy Developments, 2014)
- Preventing Hospital-acquired infections: A major concern for Vietnamese hospitals (Article, Healthy Developments, 2015)
- Cam Thuy Hospital’s ‘Vision 2020’: How Vietnamese-German cooperation has helped to transform a district hospital (Article, Healthy Developments, 2014)
- Partnerships for better patient care: How ESTHER Germany supports the twinning of African and German hospitals (Case Study, GHPC, 2015)