Setting up a Quality Assurance Model for Newborn Care to Strengthen Health System in Bihar, India.

ABSTRACT

Background: A Quality Assurance model was rolled out in Bihar, India. It had two components external and internal monitoring and giving feedback for action. The parameters included infrastructure and policy, equipment maintenance, stock supply and aseptic measures. Methods: The performance and gradation into good/average/poor was measured based on the scores translated from the data collected after giving appropriate weights. Result: 12%, 63%, and 25% units were categorized as good, average and poor based on infrastructure. For equipment, 68% of units performed poorly; for stock maintenance 64% and 35% of NBCCs fell under good and average categories respectively; most (54%) NBCCs had average scores for aseptic measures; 30% fell in the poor category. Conclusions: Involvement of government in monitoring and feedback mechanism, establishing a system of data collection at the grass root level and analysis at the state level were the positive outcomes.