The Government of India launched the Ayushman Bharat (AB) scheme with a strategic focus on Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC). The delivery of high-quality primary health care services requires health facility staff to possess specific primary care and public health competencies. To identify current and future training needs we undertook a training needs assessment among primary healthcare providers in the states of Gujarat, Meghalaya and Odisha.
Practice Notes
Bottom-up decision making requires free space to think and prioritize. To facilitate this, a workshop was conducted using the human-centered design approach with district level managers and health facility staff responsible for improving the quality of care in public health facilities in Kalahandi, Odisha. Human-centered design approaches are increasingly being used in health research settings globally, but practical experiences of using such tools have been less documented. In this practice note, we outline the steps followed in the human-centered design workshop, the types of solutions developed by the implementers, and key insights that emerged.
The National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) certification is an important government initiative to improve and maintain quality standards at public sector health facilities in India. Health facilities are assessed through a set of comprehensive, pre-defined standards derived from global best practices. However, achieving and maintaining certification is an ongoing challenge for many health facilities in India. Bhavnagar district in Gujarat has managed to achieve high levels of primary health care facility certification within a relatively short time. In this note, we discuss the reasons for this success.