SafeCare’s Post

Improving healthcare quality saves lives. Can it also help facilities grow and become more financially sustainable? That's the question behind an independent study led by Professor Wendy Janssens, Professor in Development Economics at the Vrije Universiteit (VU), joint with econometrician Dr Daniëlla Brals (Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development) and medical doctor and Senior Scientific Advisor, Dr Patricia Gómez Pérez, MD, MPH, PhD (PharmAccess Foundation). The study looked at data from 483 public and private healthcare facilities in the SafeCare programme across Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Nigeria, examining whether improvements in SafeCare quality scores were associated with increases in patient visits and staff numbers, used here as signs of how a facility's business is doing. Facilities that improved their quality scores the most also saw larger increases in patient visits and staff numbers, suggesting that investing in quality can strengthen patient confidence, encourage greater use of healthcare services, and support the growth of health facilities over time. The reverse may also be true: facilities with better business performance may simply have more room to invest in quality. The study also found that these associations were most evident among facilities that had already reached higher levels of quality. Facilities starting from lower quality levels often required more time and additional support before experiencing similar gains. This is where the findings reinforce the value of our stepwise quality improvement approach, and underscore the importance of targeted investments, innovative financing mechanisms, and public-private partnerships to help lower-performing facilities strengthen quality, expand access to care, and better serve their communities across sub-Saharan Africa. Link to the study in the comments.