Quality of Institutional Care (QUIC) was on Wednesday, 13th January, 2016 presented to the Safe Motherhood Committee in Lilongwe.
E4A supported the organization of an ad hoc Safe Motherhood Committee meeting on 13 January, in order to present the findings of the pilot and to discuss sustainability and possible scale up of QUIC.
The workshop began with a presentation giving a refresher overview of the QUIC model. This included a clear explanation of how QUIC fits into the existing landscape of quality of care monitoring and assessment in Malawi. More importantly, it aimed at demonstrating how it provides health facilities and district stakeholders with a rapid, low-cost snapshot of EmONC readiness at facility level, covering a range of quality of care domains.
Crucially, it was emphasised that the results are generated and disseminated rapidly, in an easy to understand scorecard format, as opposed to the lengthy and complex reports which come out of the comprehensive assessments used by the Ministry of Health.
These scorecards can be used by health workers to track their progress in between more comprehensive, physical assessments. Examples of how QuIC evidence has led to action to improve quality of care were shared, as well as a summary of lessons learnt from the QUIC pilot.
Representatives from 3 of the QUIC pilot districts were in attendance, including the District Health Officers and QUIC focal personnel. These districts had a poster presentations on their experiences of implementing QUIC. They then responded to questions from the audience.
This session was then rounded off with a lively plenary debate where the participants discussed how the lessons from the QUIC pilot could inform the way quality of care is monitored in facilities in future.
Agreement was made that the QUIC approach would be an effective way to enable districts to monitor progress against the action plans they produced following the 2015 Malawi EmONC Assessment results. It was also noted that the QUIC assessment outcomes and solutions were mostly only on small challenges; and on this, the Director of Reproductive Health, Mrs Fannie Kachale said the national EmONC Assessment action plans will now include those bigger district plans from QUIC assessment.
E4A will continue the discussions with WHO and RHD on how the QUIC approach can be used to allow districts to monitor progress against their EmONC action plans. A meeting will be scheduled shortly.
The workshop was attended by a cross section of partners like the Reproductive Health Directorate, the Ministry of Health's Central Monitoring and Evaluation Division, WHO, NGO partners such as VillageReach, SSDI, SOS, Maikhanda, Save the Children and CHAI, as well as representatives from some of the districts which have been implementing QUIC.