What is the public health quality check-up tool?

Joining Mobile Health Map gives you access to this free, easy-to-use tool to evaluate your public health quality. Read this post by Tyler LeComer, MD Candidate at Harvard Medical School, to learn more about this useful resource.

In 2009, a team of public health experts, including Peggy Honoré former Director of the Public Health System, Finance and Quality Program for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Donald Berwick, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, developed a framework for improving the quality of public health services.

Using this framework, we created the Public Health Quality Check-up Tool, a digital resource that helps mobile clinics assess to what extent their program is equitable, health promoting, proactive, effective and efficient, and transparent.

Below I explain these five terms and why they are important for mobile clinics:

Equitable

Health inequity means there are unfair and avoidable differences in health between different groups of people. To advance equity, mobile clinics should consider factors such as affordability, location, languages spoken, and staff diversity. These features have been shown to improve a client’s experience on your clinic!

Health Promoting

Health promotion focuses on the advancement of safe practices by both the providers and the individual clients. When assessing the extent to which your programs are health promoting, we will ask whether you provide health education, vaccines, and address social determinants of health, such as money and food availability. Your clients should leave your clinic with strategies to care for themselves at home and the resources to find more care when they need it.

Proactive

Being proactive means that a mobile clinic stays on top of their community’s health concerns and addresses them as quickly as possible. High quality clinics consistently collect and use data and feedback from the people they serve to provide the best possible care. Your clients will appreciate being heard!

Effective & Efficient

These two terms, taken together, represent the need for a clinic to maximize impact at the least possible cost. Health and money related data can be used to show that your mobile clinic, like other clinics across the country, is not only saving lives, but also saving money in the long run!

Transparent

A transparent mobile clinic is one that is open, honest, and reliable. The communities they serve can count on them and so can others that may be invested in its success. Transparent programs track and report clinic spending, changes in health after receiving care, and any differences in health over time between clients that receive care and community members that do not.

Why should I evaluate the quality of our program?

We urge you to take the time to evaluate the quality of your program. Not only does it help you plan for ongoing improvement, it is a great way to show your patients, donors, and other supporters that you are delivering the best care possible.

Join the movement and add your clinic to Mobile Health Map here!