In malaria endemic countries, 40% of the population seek care and treatment for febrile illnesses in the private sector. Successful malaria control; therefore, greatly depends on effective diagnosis and treatment within private sector outlets.
The assessment checklist is a valuable tool for supervisors monitoring the quality of care for Fever Case Management (FCM) in the private sector. It is composed of six sections:
- General information,
- Case management,
- mRDT procedure,
- Workplace assessment,
- Equipment, supplies and consumables assessment,
- Documentation and reporting.
During assessments, supervisors should go through the assessment checklist and record data. Use of the Demographic Health Information System (DHIS2) platform is recommended for data storage. Data can be automatically stored into the DHIS2 platform and at the end of each assessment supervisors will have the opportunity to highlight topics that require improvement and provide on-the-spot feedback to providers. Based on the assessment score, supervisors can also plan the frequency of upcoming assessments.
The assessment checklist is fundamental to measure and track quality of care performance. On a regular basis, assessment findings should be used to:
- Track, measure and compare providers’ quality of care,
- Design provider-specific interventions that address any identified performance gaps and reward providers for outstanding quality, including:
- Improving infrastructure, equipment or supplies needed to perform services;
- Training or re-training providers to ensure service provision is in line with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Developing performance rewards and incentives.
- Make decisions about the long-term viability of the affiliation based on performance.
These assessment checklists are part of a larger Quality Assurance Manual and Toolkit developed through the UNITAID Private Sector RDT project to provide guidance on quality assurance for FCM in the private sector.
