Fact sheet—Measuring quality of care: A review of methodologies and indicators

Despite successful efforts to increase financial and geographic access to family planning services (FP) in many parts of the developing world, large numbers of women with a desire to delay or limit future pregnancies are not using contraceptives. It is long hypothesized that the poor quality of FP service delivery in many resource-constrained settings may act as a barrier to greater contraceptive use. Starting in the 1980s, donors and technical assistance (TA) organizations devoted increasing resources to strengthening clinical quality and client counseling in particular, with efforts peaking over the next two decades. This period produced a proliferation of quality assurance, improvement, and performance improvement tools and research on quality of care’s impact on FP client behaviors and health outcomes.