Abstract
BackgroundIdentifying and addressing research gaps on the implementation of free maternal healthcare financing policies and the quality of service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is essential in ensuring continuous patronage of the services by clients and sustainability of the policies to meet the intended goals. The proposed scoping review is aimed at mapping evidence on free maternal healthcare financing and quality of care in SSA.MethodsArksey and O’Malley’s framework, Levac and colleagues’ recommendations, and the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines will be used to guide the proposed study. A complete keyword search for relevant studies presenting evidence on free maternal healthcare financing and perceived quality of care among women in SSA will be performed in EBSCOhost, PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar and SCOPUS. Relevant grey literature from university repositories and international organisations such as WHO and government websites, and the reference lists of included studies will be additionally searched. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis: Extension for Scoping Review (PRISMA-ScR) will be used to present the results of the proposed scoping review. NVivo version 11 software package will be employed to extract the relevant outcomes from the included studies using content thematic analysis. Quality appraisal of the included studies for this proposed study will be performed utilising the latest mixed methods appraisal tool.DiscussionIt is anticipated that the results of the proposed study will inform future research and reveal evidence-based information to address potential quality of care issues that may arise because of free maternal healthcare policy implementation in some SSA countries. The proposed study will also be useful to other SSA countries planning to implement free maternal health policy, as they will be able to draw useful lessons to guide them through the process.
Highlights
Identifying and addressing research gaps on the implementation of free maternal healthcare financing policies and the quality of service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is essential in ensuring continuous patronage of the services by clients and sustainability of the policies to meet the intended goals
With the intervention of antenatal care [11], every pregnant woman is supposed to visit the care provider at least four times during pregnancy for services such as health education, counselling, screening and testing, and treatment, where necessary, with the aim of promoting the health status of both mother and child [9]. These free maternal healthcare policies have improved access to healthcare, for pregnant women who are in the low-income brackets, the quality of the service delivery is essential to achieve the aim of the policy [1, 9, 11]
The proposed scoping review is aimed at mapping evidence on free maternal healthcare financing and quality of care in SSA focusing on clients, healthcare providers or healthcare professionals, and healthcare managers’ perspectives
Summary
Overview Scoping reviews are considered useful in representing series of literature that exists around a subject of interest and helps to focus the research questions by registering existing research findings and identifying research gaps [4]. Charting the data A data charting form will be developed for extraction of relevant data from the included studies in the scoping review This form will include the following: author and date, study title, objective/aim of the study, study design, study setting, type of free maternal healthcare policy and perceived quality of care. Collating, summarising and reporting the results We will extract data related to free maternal health policies and perceived quality of care in SSA using content thematic analysis approach [22]. NVivo version 11 will be employed for the content thematic analysis of the included studies and the findings on free maternal health policies and perceived quality of care in SSA summarised and presented using a narrative approach.
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