Projects
Quality of Care and Effective UHC
Access to healthcare is critical, but access to quality healthcare is a prerequisite – care that is unnecessary or inappropriate for a patient’s condition not only creates more problems than it solves, it can be extremely dangerous. Our aim is to facilitate strong, resilient systems.
In the absence of systematic data on quality of care, the working assumption in global health has been that adequately trained doctors and nurses with access to infrastructure (such as well equipped facilities and medicines) are sufficient to guarantee adequate quality. Instead, improving health system quality requires learning – building a multi-disciplinary understanding of what quality care is and how we can best learn from one another – which is why universities play a critical role. Recognizing the opportunity and the responsibility inherent in these challenges, this portfolio was established.
The ultimate goal of our quality work is to improve people’s health by ensuring that systems prioritize quality. We serve as a partner to regional, national, and international health institutions working to improve their own healthcare systems. To this end, we work alongside key decision-makers to craft policy-level strategies. Partners include ministries of health and major multilateral organizations, such as Ministries of Health, the Gates Foundation, the OECD as well as non-profit organizations. Projects include the design and evaluation of performance-based financing (e.g. P4P), public reporting and routine monitoring / improvement infrastructure. All projects share the ultimate goal of improved population health outcomes.
Featured Collaborations
The British Medical Journal
Delivering on the promise of universal health coverage.
HGHI, in partnership with The BMJ, has launched a collection of articles focusing on paths to achieving effective universal health coverage (UHC). The collection spotlights the importance of quality in UHC, potential finance models, how best to incentivize stakeholders, and some of the barriers to true UHC.
Quality of Care in India
We aim to improve the quality of care in India by better understanding the current state of quality. Our goal is to improve the safety, effectiveness, and patient centeredness of hospital care for the millions of Indian patients who seek, and receive, care in hospitals. We currently have two ongoing projects to support this work:
1. Improving Quality of Healthcare services in Indian Hospitals
Project Sites:
- Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS), Kochi, Kerala
- Sri Venkateshwara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS), Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh
2. State-wide Evidence Based Health System Reforms Project in India – Odisha in Collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The World Health Organization
- ‘Handbook for national quality policy and strategy: A practical approach for developing policy and strategy to improve quality of care‘
- Delivering Quality Health Services: A Global Imperative for Universal Health Coverage
The National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicines
- Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Healthcare Worldwide
- Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: The Scope of the Problem
Quality of Care in China
Over the past decade, China has invested significantly in healthcare and in 2009, the Chinese government launched a national healthcare reform with the goal of providing affordable and equitable access to quality healthcare for all its 1.3 billion citizens by 2020. Yet there is little understanding of the quality of care that is actually provided to Chinese citizens, which is an essential part of understanding progress towards China’s ultimate goal: improved health.
Partnering with Peking University, London School of Economics, Shandong Province Hospital and the National Health Commission of China, HGHI examined the the quality of care in top Chinese hospitals for major medical conditions following reform and found relatively low levels of quality, as well as large variations in quality across the hospitals indicating that quality of care generally does not appear to be improving post national health reform.