Evaluation of service delivery model of WHP by using Standardized Patients

WHP has established a network of clinics under the brand name of sky. There are three types of centers at three different levels viz. Sky Centre (SC), Sky Health Centre (SHC) and Skylife. The aim is to take medical services to rural areas by the use of telemedicine. For this the local doctors are enrolled and connected to formal medical facilities in bigger cities. Also, these local doctors are trained to improve quality and attain a degree of standardization in the provision of healthcare.

WHP aimed to assess the quality of healthcare provision by the network. For this the “standardised patients” methodology was adopted which involved training of field workers on the characteristics of actual patients and represent as a mystery client to the doctor. On the basis of the interaction the Standardized patient/Mystery client filled a post-visit questionnaire which facilitated understanding of the areas of diagnosis, treatment and examination covered by the doctor. The adoption of this method helped to avoid Hawthorne effect.

The study focused on four key diseases child diarrhoea, child pneumonia, tuberculosis and
kala-azar. As a part of the study the following activities were performed:

• Training of the standardised patients (SP)
• Design of the pre-visit tool (containing information about the disease to be portrayed)
• Design of post-visit exit tool (checklist)
• Study plan and analysis