Ensuring ‘Health for All’ Through Puskesmas Accreditation

Abstraksi

Puskesmas (Primary Health Center) as the first point of contact of health care unquestionably has important roles. Well-functioning Puskesmas contribute to bridge health inequalities and result in better health outcomes. By 2016, Indonesia has around 9800 Puskesmas, on which the government is aiming to accredit all Puskesmas by 2023. Accreditation is considered as an effective strategy to ensure quality, given the disparities in Indonesia has created a big gap of health care quality across the country, especially Puskesmas. Knowing the urgency, Pencerah Nusantara (PN) program deploys inter-disciplinary young health professionals who work to strengthen Puskesmas in remote areas. Deployed in 9 Puskesmas across Indonesia, PN team conduct training, mentoring, and strengthening measures to improve quality on management, health services, programs, and standards operational procedures. The team also facilitate cross-sectoral engagements in supporting community-based intervention to improve service coverage. During the intervention period there have been 45 training courses related to improving Puskesmas quality. They contributed to an increase in the quality of planning and implementation, which resulted in improved coverage of antenatal care from 47.1% to 78.3%, improved delivery by health workers by 32.6%, and malnutrition case was decreased by 0.1%. Given the different baselines, by 2018 there are 6 out of 9 puskesmas that have been accredited, whereas 1 Puskesmas received Paripurna (Excellent) Status, 1 Utama (Good), 3 Madya (Moderate) and 1 Dasar (Basic). Accreditation is not the end result, but it should be the mean to ensure health for all where everyone deserves access to quality health care.