Quality in primary health care

Overview

This paper provides governments and policy-makers with an overview of the key issues of quality in primary health care and its importance to achieving the broad public health goals within universal health coverage. It makes the case for quality improvement as a core function of primary health care and provides the perspectives of different levels of the health system on improving quality in primary health care. Achieving change in quality of care is a complex endeavour which requires a multimodal approach that recognizes the specific challenges of individual settings, and values evidence, innovation and country experience.

This report is not a comprehensive literature review, but instead cites a number of principles and interventions that can form part of efforts to achieve such change. It is largely based on the 2018 publication of the World Health Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and The World Bank, and recent reports from the United States National Academies of Sciences and the Lancet Global Commission for High Quality Health Systems.

Each of these three publications emphasizes the central role of quality in primary health care and universal health coverage. They highlight measures that have been proposed to improve quality and that have been reviewed by experts based on various criteria including their relevance to a wide variety of countries globally, their common consideration as options, the availability of evidence to guide selection and use, and whether they can be implemented at many levels, including primary care.