Improving quality of healthcare delivery continues to be one of the top priority for National Health Mission, Government of Odisha. The Department of Health & Family Welfare (DoHFW), Odisha is committed to provide quality, affordable and equitable health care to its citizen. To achieve this objective of quality service provision at public health facilities, the Government of Odisha aims to improve quality by making all its public health facilities compliant as per updated Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS)-2022. 

IPHS are a set of uniform standards envisaged to improve the quality of health care delivery in the country and serve as the bench mark for assessing the quality of clinical care at all levels. NHM, Odisha has set a target of ensuring at least 30% of its public health facilities to be IPHS compliant by end of March 2024. Norway India Partnership Initiative (NIPI), is providing the required techno-managerial support in this endeavor.

NIPI is supporting NHM in the assessment, planning, execution and documentation of the complete project cycle. Beginning with assessments and keeping in mind the timeline and to ensure quality of the data being collected, a mobile based assessment tool using ODK platform has been developed with NIPI’s support. The ODK tool has been developed for assessing the availability of infrastructure and services in the health facilities against the IPHS norms. Following the discussions on the ODK tool to ensure its suitability, the tool has been approved by NHM. Using this application, data will be collected from all the recognized public sector health facilities.

All relevant stakeholders engaged in data collection at facility and at the district level were oriented on features of the ODK tool and the process of data collection with support of NIPI team. Initially, all the Assistant Engineers posted at block level under NHM were oriented during the two-day workshop. Subsequently the tool was presented during the six-day planning workshop for Block Program Managers (BPMs) held under the Chairmanship of Additional Mission Director and attended by Team Leader State Health Systems Resource Centre (TL-SHSRC), State Program Manager (SPM), NHM and other senior officials of NHM.  The District Program Managers of NHM were also oriented on the ODK tool.

Once the data collection from all the health facilities is completed, data will be analyzed to identify gaps as per the IPHS standards. The findings of the assessment will be shared with state NHM to take appropriate actions to address the identified gaps on priority basis, to establish and deliver health services with quality.