ArticleBulletin of the World Health Organization2017
Quality of care: measuring a neglected driver of improved health.
Article in Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 81 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
81 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 168 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Comparing the use of direct observation, standardized patients and exit interviews in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review of methods of assessing quality of primary care.Health policy and planning · 2021Pooled it
- Adaptation and validation of social accountability measures in the context of contraceptive services in Ghana and Tanzania.International journal for equity in health · 2020Trial
- Associations of workforce characteristics, calendar time, and assessment modality with quality performance in family planning and post-abortion care services in Sierra Leone, 2019-2022.Global health action · 2026Article
- Evaluating the implementation of the vignettes-based injury care process assessment tool in low- and middle-income countries settings.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Quality of antenatal and delivery care and postnatal care use: A multi-country observational study of 400,000 births.PLoS medicine · 2026Observational
- Person-centered maternity care: adaptation and validation of a tool to measure person-centered maternity care in Sri Lanka.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- Assessing the capacity of primary healthcare facilities and healthcare workers in managing diabetes and hypertension in Kisumu county, Kenya.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Article
- Assessment of the quality of care provided to women with gestational diabetes mellitus by different hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan.BMJ open quality · 2025Article
- Trust in the integrity of a micro health insurance scheme and its determinants in two rural districts of Ethiopia.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Development of the PRECIOUS Short-Form (PRECIOUS-SF) quality of care measure for children with serious illnesses.Journal of patient-reported outcomes · 2025Article
- Quality of care offered by health care retail markets for medication abortion self-management: Findings from states in Nigeria and India.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Do health care quality improvement policies work for all? Distributional effects by baseline quality in South Africa.Health economics · 2025Article
- Assessment of antenatal care quality in Ethiopia: Facility-based study using service provision assessment data.PloS one · 2025Article
- Leadership, cohesion, and stress in primary care facilities and retention in chronic care in rural northeast South Africa before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study.Journal of global health · 2024Article
- Value for solidarity: a proxy for community understanding and acceptance of the basic principles of community-based health insurance in rural Ethiopia.Health economics review · 2024Article
- The role of perceived quality of care on outpatient visits to health centers in two rural districts of northeast Ethiopia: a community-based, cross-sectional study.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Article
- Quality in screening and measuring blood pressure in China's primary health care: a national cross-sectional study using unannounced standardized patients.The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific · 2024Article
21 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The quality of care provided by health systems contributes towards efforts to reach sustainable development goal 3 on health and well-being. There is growing evidence that the impact of health interventions is undermined by poor quality of care in lower-income countries. Quality of care will also be crucial to the success of universal health coverage initiatives; citizens unhappy with the quality and scope of covered services are unlikely to support public financing of health care. Moreover, an ethical impetus exists to ensure that all people, including the poorest, obtain a minimum quality standard of care that is effective for improving health. However, the measurement of quality today in low- and middle-income countries is inadequate to the task. Health information systems provide incomplete and often unreliable data, and facility surveys collect too many indicators of uncertain utility, focus on a limited number of services and are quickly out of date. Existing measures poorly capture the process of care and the patient experience. Patient outcomes that are sensitive to health-care practices, a mainstay of quality assessment in high-income countries, are rarely collected. We propose six policy recommendations to improve quality-of-care measurement and amplify its policy impact: (i) redouble efforts to improve and institutionalize civil registration and vital statistics systems; (ii) reform facility surveys and strengthen routine information systems; (iii) innovate new quality measures for low-resource contexts; (iv) get the patient perspective on quality; (v) invest in national quality data; and (vi) translate quality evidence for policy impact.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.