MANAGING QUALITY IN HEALTH CARE

Improving quality of health care services is critical for achieving the Millennium Development Goals in low- and middle-income countries such as India. Policymakers and decision-makers at state and district levels need better understanding on planning, strategizing and implementing quality of care under the health system. By collecting and synthesizing what is known as the quality management of health services, this book fills an important void in our knowledge about how to improve quality of health services at district level for achieving the goals of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) promoted by the Government of India.

This book is designed as a primer, both for students and professionals. It starts with synthesizing literature on frameworks for quality of health care which provides working definitions of what is meant by quality in health care. Based on the primary sources, the author developed a framework for quality of safe motherhood and family planning services. In subsequent chapters, the book covers measuring, diagnosing, strategizing and implementing quality of health care with particular focus on reproductive and child health care services at district level.

This comprehensive and lucid text will be useful for students, scholars and professionals in the area of health systems, health management, public health, health policy and population policy as also for those engaged in managing and researching quality in health care and performance management.

P.R. Sodani is Professor and Dean (Training), Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur. He holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He also holds a PhD degree in Economics from the Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur. He is also Associate Editor of Journal of Health Management.

He has had extensive experience for more than two decades working as researcher, technical consultant, economist, and trainer on public health, reproductive and child health, health management, health financing and health sector reforms. He has authored and contributed many studies and articles on these subjects.