A scoping review, mapping, and prioritisation process for emergency obstetric and neonatal quality of care indicators: Focus on provision and experience of care

Abstract

Background: Globally, approximately 800 women and 6400 newborns die around the time of childbirth each day. Many of these deaths could be prevented with high-quality emergency obstetric and newborn care (EmONC). The Monitoring Emergency Obstetric Care: A handbook guides strengthening EmONC services. However, the handbook contains limited quality of care measures. Our study identified and prioritised quality of care indicators for potential inclusion in the handbook, which is undergoing revision.

Methods: We conducted a consultative scoping review, mapping, and prioritisation exercise to select a short list of indicators on facility-based maternal and newborn quality of care. Indicators were identified from literature searches and expert suggestions and organised by the categories of structure, process, and outcomes as defined in the World Health Organization's Standards for Improving Quality of Maternal and Newborn Care in Health Facilities. We focused on process indicators, encompassing the provision of care and experience of care during the intrapartum period, and developed a priority list of indicators using the selection criteria of relevance and feasibility. Experience of care indicators were also mapped against the Person-Centered Maternity Care (PCMC) scale.

Results: We extracted a total of 3023 quality of care indicators. After removing out-of-scope and duplicate indicators and applying our selection criteria, we identified 20 provision of care indicators for possible inclusion in the revised EmONC handbook. We recommend including a score for experience of care that could be measured with the 30-item or the 13-item PCMC scale. We also identified 29 experience of care items not covered by the PCMC scale that could be used. Provider experience, patient safety, and quality of abortion care were identified as areas for which no or few indicators were found through our scoping review.

Conclusions: Through a rigorous, consultative, and multi-step process, we selected a short list of process-related, facility-based quality of care indicators for emergency obstetric and newborn care. This list could be included in the EmONC handbook or used for other monitoring purposes. Country consultations to assess the utility and feasibility of the proposed indicators and their adaptation to local contexts will support their refinement and uptake.

Registration: https://osf.io/msxbd (Open Science Framework).