This four-day training workshop was specifically designed for private voluntary organization (PVO) headquarters staff who were exploring ways to incorporate quality improvement techniques in their usual work. It was designed to create an awareness of the advantages of using Quality Improvement (QI) approaches to improve the quality of child survival interventions and to equip the participants with skills to use selected QI tools and techniques.  

This course was designed for health care leaders including representatives from the ministry of health, regional health directors, hospital directors and others involved in decision-making regarding the implementation of licensure, accreditation, and/or certification. The Accreditation Course was based on the content of the Quality Assurance Project monograph entitled “Licensure, Accreditation, and Certification: Approaches to Health Services Quality”. The intent of the course was to clarify the three approaches to external evaluation: licensure, accreditation, and certification and, provided the participants an opportunity to consider the application of these approaches in their respective countries.

This course in training skills was designed to help health workers (e.g., physicians, nurses, midwives, administrators, information officers, clinical assistants) become more effective QA trainers. Training emphasizes doing, not just knowing, and uses competency-based evaluation of performance through both peer and self-assessment of actual training. Participants were required to have general QA knowledge, and specific skills in the technical area they were going to teach.

This four-day course was designed for service providers or managers who are new to quality assurance. If possible, an entire facility team attended together. Participants learned how to identify opportunities for improvement and plan a quality improvement project at the facility level. Instructional methods included small group work employing a variety of exercises and case examples. Topics included: principles of management conducive to improving quality; systems view of organization; quality improvement tools; working in teams; team-building; measurement using quantitative and qualitative data, common cause and special cause variation; and planning for quality improvement.

Users must register with the IHI site first; registration is free. The Breakthrough Series: IHI’s Collaborative Model for Achieving Breakthrough Improvement can be downloaded free of charge at: http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Results/WhitePapers/TheBreakthroughSeriesIHIsColl... The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) developed the Breakthrough Series to help health care organizations make "breakthrough" improvements in quality while reducing costs. The driving vision behind the Breakthrough Series is this: sound science exists on the basis of which the costs and outcomes of current health care practices can be greatly improved, but much of this science lies fallow and unused in daily work. There is a gap between what we know and what we do. The Breakthrough Series is designed to help organizations close that gap by creating a structure in which interested organizations can easily learn from each other and from recognized experts in topic areas where they want to make improvements. A Breakthrough Series Collaborative is a short-term (6- to 15-month) learning system that brings together a large number of teams from hospitals or clinics to seek improvement in a focused topic area. Since 1995, IHI has sponsored over 50 such Collaborative projects on several dozen topics involving over 2,000 teams from 1,000 health care organizations. Collaboratives range in size from 12 to 160 organizational teams. Each team typically sends three of its members to attend Learning Sessions (three face-to-face meetings over the course of the Collaborative), with additional members working on improvements in the local organization.

This working paper is the result of collaboration between the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and URC’s Quality Assurance and Workforce Development Project (QAP). Worldwide, the commitment to protect and support children affected by HIV/AIDS is growing, and countries with low level or concentrated epidemics are increasingly developing and putting in place special programs to support these children. The goal of the working paper was to summarize and weigh the evidence on a myriad of challenges faced by children affected by HIV/AIDS in low prevalence and concentrated epidemic countries in order to facilitate evidence-based programming.

With the onset of quality movement in the health care sector, a growing interest in the quality evaluation of health services has been noted. Licensure, accreditation, and certification are systems available to meet the need for quality and performance information. These systems have different purposes and different capabilities. However, selecting the right system or combination of systems requires careful analysis of user needs and expectations. In view of the above, this monograph provides assistance to decision-makers in analyzing various approaches to health services quality evaluation and management. It has five chapters. Chapter I is the introduction and Chapter II guides the reader through the steps in assessing the needs for quality evaluation. Chapters III and IV provide a description of the various approaches appropriate for meeting the identified needs, including the strengths and weaknesses of a standards approach and an outcome measurement approach. Particular emphasis is placed on licensure, accreditation, and certification strategies. Finally, Chapter V reviews the factors that decision makers should consider in the design and implementation of the quality study illustration describing the development and implementation of the quality evaluation approach that they select. Appendices include a case study illustration describing the development and implementation of a hospital accreditation program in Zambia and a comparison of health sector accreditation programs around the world.

The monograph is also available in Spanish and Portuguese.