Quality As Important As Access In Universal Health Coverage

New England Journal of Medicine: Putting Quality on the Global Health Agenda
Kirstin Scott and Ashish Jha of the Initiative on Global Health Quality in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health

“…Universal health coverage has been proposed as a potential umbrella goal for health in the next round of global development priorities. The reasons for focusing on such a goal are compelling: for much of the world’s population, access to health care is severely limited and often financially out of reach. … In order to improve the health of the world’s population, we need to simultaneously ensure that the care provided is of sufficiently high quality, an issue that has garnered far less concrete attention. … Investing in programs to improve access to health care services is critically important — but will not be enough to improve the health of the world’s population. We need to prioritize both access and quality, because doing more isn’t better. Doing better is better” (7/3).

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