Operations research to improve postabortion (PAC) services in three public hospitals, Bolivia

Abstract

In the last five years Pathfinder Bolivia has provided technical assistance training and equipment to the Ministry of Health (MOH) to implement postabortion care (PAC) services in eight hospitals. Pathfinder and the USAID Mission in Bolivia consider operations research (OR) an important tool to help solve existing service delivery problems. Therefore they invited Frontiers in Reproductive Health (FRONTIERS) to collaborate in a project whereby participating MOH hospitals would implement the research and service delivery components Pathfinder would contribute technical assistance and training for implementing the interventions and FRONTIERS would provide the technical assistance and training for conducting the research activities. This final report describes the second stage of this collaborative effort with the Bolivian office of Pathfinder International the Catalyst Project and the MOH. In the first stage begun in 2002 the institutions conducted a study in eight hospitals to assess the effects of peer-review on quality improvement of PAC services 1. The results of this study were presented in a three-day workshop attended by providers and staff members of the participant hospitals. During the workshop participants also received OR training and developed draft OR proposals seeking to improve PAC service delivery problems identified during this first study. The four best draft proposals were selected and in the following months FRONTIERS continued to provide technical assistance to the hospital provider teams first to develop full OR proposals and later to implement the OR projects. Table 1 lists the project proposals developed. (excerpt)