Assessing the quality of care in a new nation: South Sudan's first national health facility assessment.

Berendes, Sima, Lako, Richard L, Whitson, Donald, Gould, Simon and Valadez, Joseph ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6575-6592 (2014) 'Assessing the quality of care in a new nation: South Sudan's first national health facility assessment.'. Tropical Medicine & International Health, Vol 19, Issue 10, pp. 1237-1248.

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Abstract

OBJECTIVES

We adapted a rapid quality of care monitoring method to a fragile state with two aims: to assess the delivery of child health services in South Sudan at the time of independence and to strengthen local capacity to perform regular rapid health facility assessments.

METHODS

Using a two-stage lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) design, we conducted a national cross-sectional survey among 156 randomly selected health facilities in 10 states. In each of these facilities, we obtained information on a range of access, input, process and performance indicators during structured interviews and observations.

RESULTS

Quality of care was poor with all states failing to achieve the 80% target for 14 of 19 indicators. For example, only 12% of facilities were classified as acceptable for their adequate utilisation by the population for sick-child consultations, 16% for staffing, 3% for having infection control supplies available and 0% for having all child care guidelines. Health worker performance was categorised as acceptable in only 6% of cases related to sick-child assessments, 38% related to medical treatment for the given diagnosis and 33% related to patient counselling on how to administer the prescribed drugs. Best performance was recorded for availability of in-service training and supervision, for seven and ten states, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite ongoing instability, the Ministry of Health developed capacity to use LQAS for measuring quality of care nationally and state-by-state, which will support efficient and equitable resource allocation. Overall, our data revealed a desperate need for improving the quality of care in all states.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	W General Medicine. Health Professions > Health Services. Patients and Patient Advocacy > W 84 Health services. Delivery of health care WA Public Health > WA 105 Epidemiology WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries WA Public Health > Health Administration and Organization > WA 525 General works WX Hospitals and Other Health Facilities > WX 20 Research (General)
Faculty: Department:	Clinical Sciences & International Health > International Public Health Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1111/tmi.12363
Depositing User:	Helen Fletcher
Date Deposited:	18 Sep 2014 13:12
Last Modified:	06 Dec 2019 16:19
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/4456

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