Safe Care, Saving Lives

Donors and Partners:
Children’s Investment Fund Foundation
Aarogyasri HealthCare Trust, Telangana
Dr. NTR Vaidya Seva Scheme, Andhra Pradesh
Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Telangana
Department of Health and Family Welfare, Andhra Pradesh

Background:
Around 650,000 newborn babies die every year in India. It is the highest number of newborn deaths in the world. While the government of India has worked hard to increase access to healthcare across the country, these efforts have not led to comparable declines in neonatal and maternal mortality.

Program Objectives:
To address this challenge, ACCESS Health International and the public health insurance program in Andhra Pradesh, Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, launched a quality improvement program called Safe Care, Saving Lives. The program aimed to reduce the neonatal and perinatal mortality rate by fifteen percent over a four year period through quality improvement.

The program worked exclusively with public and private healthcare facilities in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh who were empaneled with the public health insurance programs in the two states.

This approach is what makes the Safe Care, Saving Lives program so unique. By working closely with the public health insurance providers, Safe Care, Saving Lives was able to create lasting institutional change, improving the quality of care across the entire healthcare market and strengthening the government’s leading role in ongoing quality improvement.

Impact:
ACCESS Health International’s team of quality improvement experts developed a Quality Improvement Kit for Safe Care, Saving Lives. The kit houses clinical best practices to improve the outcomes of neonatal care and addresses the three largest causes of neonatal mortality: sepsis, birth asphyxia, and complications due to premature birth. The kit also provides a framework for quality improvement that can be applied by continuously within the hospital.

Under the Safe Care, Saving Lives program, facilities are also able to share their successes and failures with each other in learning sessions, so they can learn about successful practices developing in other facilities and are able to consider adopting them in their own.

During the four year program, In its first year, the Safe Care, Saving Lives program helped hundreds of thousands of newborns in intensive care units across the two Indian states. ACCESS Health is now working with several other state governments who are attempting to replicate the program. Medical colleges across the country are also introducing quality improvement in curricula based on our initial success in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

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