District Quality of Care Assessment

By monitoring the work performance of a clinic, a supervisor can become aware of the daily problems affecting the quality of care in a clinic. There are direct and indirect methods that are used to assess quality of care. Direct methods involve the observation of patient consultations and the use of simulation or ghost patients. These methods are often more accurate, but require expert evaluators and are outside the scope of expertise of most clinic supervisors.

In the DISCA instrument (the use of which is described below) we use only indirect methods of assessing quality. These methods rely on inspection of the facility, interviewing staff, and reviewing records. The advantage of this method is that district clinic supervisors are able to easily do these assessments without having to rely on expert outside consultants.