Health Care Intervention Research- Improving Pre-natal and Maternal Care

Not Applicable

• Conditions: Antenatal Care and Delivery
• Interventions: Other: CDSS

• Registration Number: NCT01409824
• Lead Sponsor: Heidelberg University

Brief Summary

Besides a dramatic lack of financial and human resources in developing countries, health care is additionally endangered by quality deficiencies caused by low staff motivation. This lack of motivation leads to an insufficient translation of knowledge into optimal utilization of resources. The "know-do" gap represents a challenge that must be addressed to strengthen health services performance towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is in particular true for some sensitive sectors like pre-natal and maternal health care. General objective of this research is to improve maternal health through better pre-natal and maternal care services offered by better motivated health workers. A computer-assisted clinical decision support system (CDSS) will be developed, implemented and tested aiming at (I) quality improvement of maternal and newborn care and (II) assessment of provider's performance. Based on this tool a commonly agreed incentive scheme to increase motivation will be shaped and tested in three SSA - countries, namely Burkina, Ghana, and Tanzania.

The incentive scheme might contain both non-monetary and monetary incentives and will be designed according to the human resource policy in the three countries. The planned approach is an implementation study with control arms containing one hospital and 6 first line health facilities in each of the study districts and an equal number of facilities in the control arm. A set of indicators for measurement of changes in quality of delivered services will be identified in order to follow up the sustainability and effectiveness of the strategies after their implementation. The study findings will allow understanding the important factors of staff motivation and facilitate adequate management for improvement of maternal and neonatal health care. "Knowing is not enough, we must apply; Wanting to do, is not enough, we must do it1"

- J.W. v. Goethe

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2009-05
• Status Verified: 2010-02
• Primary Completion: 2010-09
• Study First Submitted: 2011-08-03
• Study First Submitted QC: 2011-08-03
• Last Update Submitted: 2011-08-03
• Study First Posted: 2011-08-04
• Last Update Posted: 2011-08-04
• Study Completion: 2014-04

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: UNKNOWN
• Sex: Female
• Target Recruitment: 36

Inclusion Criteria

• the patient in the primary health care center

Exclusion Criteria

• patients outside the research regions

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
without CDSS	CDSS	This arm includes 6 health facilities in each partner country, where the clinical decision support system will not be implemented
with CDSS	CDSS	This arm includes 6 health facilities in each partner country, where the clinical decision support system will be implemented, parallel to the performance based incentive package

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
motivation	2 years	This research aims to increase the motivation of the health care providers through two parallel intervention packages- implementation of Clinical decision support system and incentive packages, based on the performance.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Improved quality of health services in ANC and delivery	2 years	This research aims to improve the quality of the services provided through better motivated health workers

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University of Heidelberg; 🇩🇪 Heidelberg, Germany