In June 2018 the Ministry of Health requested support from the Accessible Quality Healthcare (AQH) project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and implemented by Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Save the Children, to generate evidence regarding the current status of Primary Health Care (PHC) in Kosovo.

In response to this request AQH conducted the first national facility-based Quality of Care (QoC) study in all 38 municipalities in Kosovo. The study was originally conducted in 2016 in the 12 municipalities supported by the AQH project as a mechanism for collecting baseline data to inform the design of project interventions.  It comprises modules designed to assess three dimensions of quality: structural attributes; process attributes; and outcome attributes, and provides evidence-based data on the quality of infrastructure including the availability of drugs, equipment etc., the clinical consultation and patient satisfaction with the consultation.

The modules are based on a mix of indicators from the WHO Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) and the “Tool to Improve Quality of Health Care” within the “ACCESS” program supported by the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development (2014), as relevant. The modules were adapted to the Kosovo local context thereby taking into consideration the national PHC norms or, where these are unavailable, the WHO norms established in the ‘Package of Essential Non-Communicable Diseases Interventions’. The study targets PHC facilities in both rural and urban areas and data was collected at three different levels: 1) the health facility; 2) the health provider; and 3) the patient.

In addition to providing each municipality with their specific results, a consolidated report was also produced that provides a national perspective across all municipalities. The national study confirms many of the findings of the 2016 study conducted in the 12 project municipalities: inadequate infrastructure, including poor availability of basic PHC equipment and essential drugs; generally good quality of clinical consultation but provision of health education needs to be improved; the level of patient satisfaction is high, but this suggests that there is a low level of expectation about the quality of PHC services that should be provided.

The reports are available from www.aqhproject.org

Merita Stavileci Mustafa, Senior National Programme Officer, Embassy of Switzerland, Swiss Cooperation Office in Kosovo merita.stavileci@eda.admin.ch