Incentives play an important role in motivating community health workers (CHWs). In India, accredited social health activists (ASHAs) are female CHWs who provide a range of services, including those specific to reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child, and adolescent health. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 49 ASHAs and one of their family members (husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, or son) from Gurdaspur and Mewat districts to explore the role of family, community, and health system in supporting ASHAs in their work. Thematic analysis revealed that incentives were both empowering and a source of distress for ASHAs and their families. Earning income and contributing to the household’s financial wellbeing inspired a sense of financial independence and self-confidence for ASHAs, especially with respect to relations with their husbands and parents-in-law. In spite of the empowering effects of the incentives, they were a cause of distress. Low incentive rates relative to the level of effort required to complete ASHA responsibilities, compounded by irregular and incomplete payment, put pressure on families. ASHAs dedicated much of their time and own resources to perform their duties, drawing them away from their household responsibilities. Communication around incentives from supervisors may have led ASHAs to prioritize and promote those services that yielded higher incentives, as opposed to focusing on the most appropriate services for the client. ASHAs and their families maintained hope that their positions would eventually bring in a regular salary, which contributed to retention of ASHAs. Incentives, therefore, are both motivating and inspiring as well as a cause dissatisfaction among ASHAs and their families. Recommendations include revising the incentive scheme to be responsive to the time and effort required to complete tasks and the out-of-pocket costs incurred while working as an ASHA; improve communication to ASHAs on incentives and responsibilities; and ensure timely and complete payment of incentives to ASHAs. The findings from this study contribute to the existing literature on incentivized CHW programs and help throw added light on the role incentives play in family dynamics which affects performance of CHW.

ObjectiveHub and spoke model has been used across industries to augment peripheral services by centralising key resources. This exercise evaluated the feasibility of whether such a model can be developed and implemented for quality improvement across rural and urban settings in India with support from a network for quality improvement.MethodsThis model was implemented using support from the state and district administration. Medical colleges were designated as hubs and the secondary and primary care facilities as spokes. Training in quality improvement (QI) was done using WHO’s point of care quality improvement methodology. Identified personnel from hubs were also trained as mentors. Both network mentors (from QI network) and hub-mentors (from medical colleges) undertook mentoring visits to their allotted facilities. Each of the participating facility completed their QI projects with support from mentors.ResultsTwo QI training workshops and two experience sharing sessions were conducted for implementing the model. A total of 34 mentoring visits were undertaken by network mentors instead of planned 14 visits and rural hub-mentors could undertake only four visits against planned 18 visits. Ten QI projects were successfully completed by teams, 80% of these projects started during the initial intensive phase of mentoring. The projects ranged from 3 to 10 months with median duration being 5 months.DiscussionVarious components of a health system must work in synergy to sustain improvements in quality of care. Quality networks and collaboratives can play a significant role in creating this synergy. Active participation of district and state administration is a critical factor to produce a culture of quality in the health system.

Neonatal hypothermia is a common and dangerous condition around the world. 70% of neonates born in Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital in New Delhi, India, and subsequently admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) had a temperature below 36.5°C on admission. In July 2016, we formed a team of staff from the labour room, NICU and auxiliary staff to reduce hypothermia in babies transported to our NICU using quality improvement methods. We identified problems related to staff awareness of hypothermia and its dangers, environmental factors and supply issues in the labour room, and challenges with rapidly and safely transferring sick newborns to the NICU. We used the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to test and adapt solutions to these problems. Because infection is a common complication of hypothermia, we also instituted a training programme to improve handwashing skills among parents and health workers. Within 9 months of starting our quality improvement project, the proportion of neonates who were normothermic on admission increased from 27% to 75%, the number of cases of late-onset neonatal sepsis decreased from 15.2 to 5 cases/1000 patient days, and all-cause mortality fell from 4.2 to 2.6 neonatal deaths per week. Multiple factors can lead to neonatal hypothermia, and the most important factors will differ from facility to facility. Quality improvement methods provide health workers with the skills to identify the key factors contributing to hypothermia in their facility and to develop strategies to address them. Addressing processes of care can lead to improved thermal care and save lives.

BackgroundWhile increase in the number of women delivering in health facilities has been rapid, the quality of obstetric and neonatal care continues to be poor in India, contributing to high maternal and neonatal mortality.MethodsThe USAID ASSIST Project supported health workers in 125 public health facilities (delivering approximately 180,000 babies per year) across six states to use quality improvement (QI) approaches to provide better care to women and babies before, during and immediately after delivery. As part of this intervention, each month, health workers recorded data related to nine elements of routine care alongside data on perinatal mortality. We aggregated facility level data and conducted segmented regression to analyse the effect of the intervention over time.ResultsCare improved to 90–99% significantly (p < 0.001) for eight of the nine process elements. A significant (p < 0.001) positive change of 30–70% points was observed during post intervention for all the indicators and 3–17% points month-to-month progress shown from the segmented results. Perinatal mortality declined from 26.7 to 22.9 deaths/1000 live births (p < 0.01) over time, however, it is not clear that the intervention had any significant effect on it.ConclusionThese results demonstrate the effectiveness of QI approaches in improving provision of routine care, yet these approaches are underused in the Indian health system. We discuss the implications of this for policy makers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1318-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

BackgroundInadequate quality of care has been identified as one of the most significant challenges to achieving universal health coverage in low-income and middle-income countries. To address this WHO-SEARO, the point of care quality improvement (POCQI) method has been developed. This paper describes developing a dynamic framework for the implementation of POCQI across India from 2015 to 2020.MethodsA total of 10 intervention strategies were designed as per the needs of the local health settings. These strategies were implemented across 10 states of India, using a modification of the ‘translating research in practice’ framework. Healthcare professionals and administrators were trained in POCQI using a combination of onsite and online training methods followed by coaching and mentoring support. The implementation strategy changed to a fully digital community of practice platform during the active phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dashboard process, outcome indicators and crude cost of implementation were collected and analysed across the implementation sites.ResultsThree implementation frameworks were evolved over the study period. The combined population benefitting from these interventions was 103 million. A pool of QI teams from 131 facilities successfully undertook 165 QI projects supported by a pool of 240 mentors over the study period. A total of 21 QI resources and 6 publications in peer-reviewed journals were also developed. The average cost of implementing POCQI initiatives for a target population of one million was US$ 3219. A total of 100 online activities were conducted over 6 months by the digital community of practice. The framework has recently extended digitally across the South-East Asian region.ConclusionThe development of an implementation framework for POCQI is an essential requirement for the initiative’s successful country-wide scale. The implementation plan should be flexible to the healthcare system’s needs, target population and the implementing agency’s capacity and amenable to multiple iterative changes.