Quality of Family Welfare Services in Four Selected States of India: From Exit Eligible Women's Perpsective

Dibya Mahanta, Utkal University

In the recent years a number of researchers have clearly brought out the necessity to shift the emphasis from quantity to quality, which will yield more satisfied, and committed service users who will have self-sustained motivation, leading to the higher prevalence of service utilization. Now-a- days there has been growing recognition among researchers and policy makers that the quality of care provided by family welfare programmes in developing countries is an determinants of the fact whether these programmes are under utilized by the population they are designed to serve. Whatever the strengths and limitations of satisfaction should be as indispensable to assessment of health care system. It is also based on the idea that clients have a right to expect knowledge and satisfaction, and that fulfilling those expectations is the most valued aim of a conscientious manager and service provider. There are multiple perspectives on what constitutes quality of care. Quality is not an elusive and intangible concept but something that may be measured and quantified. Quality is what the client perceives and not what the provider assumes. So the degree of quality of care should be assessed in terms of what is received by the client than what is provided by the provider. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the variation in perceived quality of care in family welfare programme by exit eligible women in some selected Indian states. Their perception about quality of care received just before coming out the service delivery centre has been captured by taking some of the important dimensions viz; Doctor's Behaviour, facility at PHC, privacy during consultation, waiting time for consultation, time taken to reach the Govt. clinic from the client's house, convenient time and satisfied with the service received on that day. The basic data used for this paper will be taken from Population Simulation Project, which was conducted by International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) in 1992-94.