Quality in Health Project

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The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Guatemala intends to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for an anticipated five-year, cost plus fixed-fee completion type contract.  

The Quality in Health (QIH) will provide technical assistance and support to Guatemala’s Ministry of Health (MOH) to structure and implement a comprehensive and sustainable quality management system for the public network of health services, with the ultimate objective of improving the quality of care and improving the health and nutrition status of the Guatemalan population.

Technical assistance to the MOH to develop and implement a health quality system will focus on the six principal domains for quality interventions outlined in WHO Quality of Care framework (leadership, information, patient and population engagement, regulation and standards, organizational capacity, and models of care).  The identification of these six domains by WHO as the essential core of a quality system, is based on many decades of experience in countries around the world that have made efforts to improve the quality of their health systems.

This program will improve the coordination of MOH units managing the three levels of health services.  By implementing a Quality Management System, the QIH project in coordination with other stakeholders, will contribute to the MOH health information system, the financial management system, the pharmaceutical and commodity logistics system and human resource systems.  Thus, the MOH will strengthen its normative capacity as well as their capacity for using information for decision making, facilitating processes at the services delivery level to improve its quality and coverage.

The QIH project will contemplate four components:

1. 
   
2. Situational analysis
   
3. Policy and regulations
   
4. Establishment of the quality management system
   
5. Monitoring the implementation of the quality management system