Institutionalization of Minimum Service Standards (MSS) for Health Facilities in Nepal: Exemplary Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Cycle for Readiness and Service Availability
Abstract
Access to health facilities alone, without quality services, does more harm than the benefit to the people’s health.
Nepal has invested more than two decades in expansion of number of health facilities and the journey is still on to
balance level of health facilities based on the federal structure. Institutionalization of Minimum Service Standards
(MSS) for health facilities in Nepal implemented by Ministry of Health and Population is an exemplary Plan-DoStudy-Act (PDSA) cycle for health facilities readiness and service availability for quality improvement. Thus, it is important to document the process for guiding institutionalization of tools. From its design, development, stakeholders’ engagement, implementation to development of action plan makes MSS lively and outcome-oriented
tool. MSS for health facilities in Nepal is an effort of government to prepare foundation of readiness and service
availability to move ahead with effective quality service utilization. Digitalization of the all sets of MSS,
development of MSS to cover the existing type of the health facilities currently present in the country and access
of data set for researchers is the way forward. Developing standards for national accreditation system and
international collaboration is the next step to embrace. Furthermore, MSS gradually reported through selfassessment of the health facilities with occasional monitoring by the local, provincial and federal government and gap fulfillment through routine annual work plan and budgeting is the future direction. It is high time MoHP moves ahead with service specific quality improvement tools integrated with MSS assessment to prepare them for high
quality health systems that can adapt to changing health needs and health shocks.
The author(s) retain the copyright and the full publishing right without restriction under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) which allows readers to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercially, provided the work is properly attributed. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Author(s) grant the non-exclusive publishing right to the Journal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (JKAHS). The publishing rights include the rights to publish, reproduce, distribute, include in indexes or search databases or other media in print or online. The JKAHS may require revisions to the manuscript before acceptance for publication or may choose not to publish it based on the judgement of the editors. Further, JKAHS might retract, withdraw, or publish a correction or other notice after publication, if such publication would be inconsistent with the good publication practices and associated guidelines set forth by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).
