Use of a national collaborative to improve hospital quality in a low-income setting.

Background: Quality improvement collaboratives are a widely used mechanism to improve hospital performance in high-income settings, but we lack evidence about their effectiveness in low-income settings.

Methods: We conducted cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of data from the Ethiopian Hospital Alliance for Quality, a national collaborative sponsored by Ethiopia's Federal Ministry of Health. We identified hospital strategies associated with more positive patient satisfaction using linear regression and assessed changes in patient experience over a 3-year period (2012-2014) using matched t-tests.

A national system for monitoring the performance of hospitals in Ethiopia.

Many countries struggle to develop and implement strategies to monitor hospitals nationally. The challenge is particularly acute in low-income countries where resources for measurement and reporting are scarce. We examined the experience of developing and implementing a national system for monitoring the performance of 130 government hospitals in Ethiopia.