Improving Clinical Quality

EngenderHealth leads in improving the quality of health care in the world’s poorest communities. Quality health care – particularly reproductive health care and family planning services – means that providers listen; ensure that clients are able to make informed and voluntary decisions about their care; are responsive to clients’ needs; maintain clients’ privacy; and practice proper infection prevention.

Working closely with local governments and health facilities, EngenderHealth also improves quality by helping increase communication between staff and supervisors through an approach called facilitative supervision, monitoring health services to find the gaps between established standards and actual practice, and addressing the diverse learning needs of health care staff at a facility through whole-site training.

To carry out these approaches, EngenderHealth developed and offers a number of simple and practical tools for health care staff and their supervisors, including:

• COPE®, which stands for services that are “client-oriented, provider-efficient.” COPE is a pioneering set of tools for health providers and other staff to continuously assess and improve the quality of their services.
• Community COPE, a participatory process that builds partnership between health care staff and community members in order to make health services more responsive to local needs.
• Quality Measuring Tool, used annually by site staff and supervisors to determine whether clients’ rights are being upheld and staff’s needs are being met.
• Cost Analysis Tool, measuring the costs of providing health services and can be used to improve the efficiency of staff.
• Instruction manuals and online courses in infection prevention.