This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

This book provides a multi-disciplinary framework for developing and analyzing health sector reforms, based on the authors' extensive international experience. It offers practical guidance - useful to policymakers, consultants, academics, and students alike - and stresses the need to take account of each country's economic, administrative, and political circumstances. The authors explain how to design effective government interventions in five areas - financing, payment, organization, regulation, and behavior - to improve the performance and equity of health systems around the world.

The National Roundtable on Health Care Quality was established in 1995 by the Institute of Medicine. The Roundtable consists of experts formally appointed through procedures of the National Research Council (NRC) who represent both public and private-sector perspectives and appropriate areas of substantive expertise (not organizations). From the public sector, heads of appropriate Federal agencies serve. It offers a unique, nonadversarial environment to explore ongoing rapid changes in the medical marketplace and the implications of these changes for the quality of health and health care in this nation. The Roundtable has a liaison panel focused on quality of care in managed care organizations. The Roundtable convenes nationally prominent representatives of the private and public sector (regional, state and federal), academia, patients, and the health media to analyze unfolding issues concerning quality, to hold workshops and commission papers on significant topics, and when appropriate, to produce periodic statements for the nation on quality of care matters. By providing a structured opportunity for regular communication and interaction, the Roundtable fosters candid discussion among individuals who represent various sides of a given issue.

The package of health system resilience indicators serves as a dedicated resource to measure and monitor health system resilience in routine operations as well as in the context of disruptive shocks and stressors. This work addresses an identified gap in measurement and monitoring of health system resilience. It complements the Health Systems Resilience Toolkit and supports implementation of the recommendations in WHO’s position paper on building health system resilience for UHC and health security. The package aims to support countries to progressively build their capacities to measure, monitor and build health system resilience from national to subnational levels covering health facilities and other service delivery platforms. It emphasizes an integrated approach to health system strengthening underpinned by essential public health functions, encompassing health emergency preparedness. It includes: - guidance on how to utilize and adapt the health system resilience indicators, including a step-by-step guide - a suite of recommended health system resilience indicators with technical specifications - supplementary indicators of relevance to health system resilience The primary target audience for this package is national and subnational health authorities (including planners and managers) and service providers, as well as local, regional, and global technical organizations and partners working on health system strengthening, including WHO, United Nations country teams, donors, nongovernment organizations, development and humanitarian agencies, and other health-related technical agencies.

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of recent work on quality measurement of medical care and its correlates in four low and middle-income countries-India, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Paraguay. The authors describe two methods-testing doctors and watching doctors-that are relatively easy to implement and yield important insights about the nature of medical care in these countries. The paper discusses the properties of these measures, their correlates, and how they may be used to evaluate policy changes. Finally, the authors outline an agenda for further research and measurement.

According to the most recent data available , 4.5 billion people were not fully covered by essential health services in their countries in 2021. Likewise, in 2019, the total population experiencing financial hardship was estimated to be 2 billion people. To scale up action to leave no one behind, WHO’s Fourteenth General Programme of Work, 2025-2028 (GPW 14) has an explicit and strong commitment to equity. In support of this, WHO has released a handbook with methods for the identification of barriers to effective coverage with health services. The 8-module handbook applies mixed method research approaches -- grounded in the Tanahashi framework for effective coverage -- to focus on barriers experienced by potential users and non-users of health services. The handbook facilitates the capturing of evidence on the interface between the population and the services. The handbook has four objectives. 1.To orient national authorities and partners on key concepts, definitions, frameworks and principles relevant to barriers assessments. 2.To build the capacity of national authorities and partners to design a research plan and apply diverse methods (e.g. informant interviews, literature reviews, quantitative analysis and focus groups) in barriers assessments. 3.To provide guidance for reporting on barrier assessment findings in a clear and actionable manner and convening key stakeholders to deliberate next steps. 4.To adapt the methods for humanitarian contexts, accounting for the need for differentiated approaches.

On 9 February and 1–4 March 2022, the World Health Organization convened experts to review proposed indicators and prioritize the most technically sound, feasible facility-based indicators for strengthening noncommunicable disease patient and programme monitoring systems at national and subnational levels for evidence-informed management of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, diabetes, hypertension and cancers such as breast cancer, cervical cancer, childhood cancers and general cancers in primary care delivery settings. This technical report captures the meeting proceedings, conclusions, and recommendations and proposes the following actions to improve validity and feasibility indicators: 1. development of clearer, operationalized definitions of numerators and denominators of indicators for consistent measurement, 2. contextualization of indicators according to varying modalities in service delivery and infrastructure in countries, 3. engagement of stakeholders in setting the target for each indicator, 4. establishment of effective coordination mechanisms among health providers at different levels of care, and 5. strengthening of routine health information systems for individual tracking and programme management using appropriate technologies.

This Primer is about the 'how' of primary health care (PHC) and brings together best practices and knowledge that countries have generated through 'natural experiments' in strengthening PHC with the best available research evidence. Despite the progress made towards PHC globally, the concept is still often misunderstood, even within the public health community. The Primer offers a contemporary understanding of PHC and more conceptual clarity for strengthening PHC-oriented health systems. It does so by consolidating both scientific evidence and an extensive sample of practical experiences across countries for the needed evidence to address practical implementation issues. The Primer is organized in three parts. Part I explains the PHC approach, its history, core concepts and rationale, and draws out lessons for transformation. Part II addresses operational and strategic levers that make PHC work. It covers governance, financing and human resources for health, medicines, health technology, infrastructure and digital health, and their role in implementing change. Part III concludes with a cross-cutting view of the impacts of PHC on the health system, efficiency, quality of care, equity, access, financial protection and health systems resilience, including in the face of climate change.

Noncommunicable disease facility-based monitoring guidance: Framework, indicators, and application provides the indicators needed for NCD facility-based patient and programme monitoring at primary care level. The purpose of this document is to improve availability and quality of NCD healthcare and to enhance healthcare professionals’ performance on early detection, screening, treatment, and complication assessment in primary healthcare for cardiovascular diseases including hypertension, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and cancer. Key target audiences are health facility providers and managers, along with international partners, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, civil society, and academic institutions, who are engaged with NCD healthcare provision in primary healthcare