Improving the Quality of Reproductive Health Care: How Much Does It Cost?
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Download Improving the Quality of Reproductive Health Care: How Much Does it Cost? (PDF: 223KB)
(May 2003) Quality care for clients should be the focus of a family planning and reproductive health program. But can programs afford it? There is no simple answer. The multiple dimensions of quality of care make it more difficult to identify and measure affordable improvements in service delivery. Calculating program costs is challenging, and different methods of determining costs can lead to widely varying estimates. The critical elements of a quality service may vary from program to program—and from one perspective to another. Determining how much quality costs is a challenge, but it is both possible and important for programs' sustainability.
There are few studies that quantify the cost and cost effectiveness of providing high-quality reproductive health care. This brief focuses on various aspects of costs and examines information about the cost of improving quality (as opposed to the cost of quality of care in general), then outlines some ways to improve quality while containing costs.
Quality, access, and cost are interrelated program elements, and a change in one element affects the others. Given their finite resources, programs may face difficult choices as they attempt to find the appropriate balance. Ideally, decisions about quality should be the result of a dialogue among key stakeholders: policymakers, providers, and clients. Each program has to decide what standard of quality is appropriate to apply considering its situation, its resources, and the needs and perceptions of the population it is meant to serve.
This policy brief, part of the New Perspectives on Quality of Care series, uses the framework developed by the U.E. Agency for International Development's Maximizing Access and Quality (MAQ) initiative.