In order to enhance the quality of care and discipline among its service providers, the Lesotho Planned Parenthood Association (LPPA) has developed a system that strives to promote and maintain a culture of excellence in service provision. This is through the practice of rewarding its best-performing clinic.

Each year, during LPPA’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), the best-performing clinic is feted, with the award being presented to the Chairperson of the related branch by the LPPA President.

LPPA has established that this annual practice helps in ensuring that each service provider is committed to delivering on LPPA’s mandate; that of offering quality sexual and reproductive health services to the Mosotho people and more so the vulnerable, poor, most-at-risk and hard-to-reach populations.

The practice helps in ensuring that each LPPA client receives the highest standards of quality care and delivered to them in the best conditions; wherever they are. Good quality of care enhances clients’ satisfaction and their use of services -a status that LPPA endeavours to achieve for all its clients.

Key elements in the judging criteria for LPPA's best-performing clinic include:

• Overall cleanliness of the clinic
• Adherence to service delivery and infection prevention guidelines
• Initiative in outsourcing Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) information for both service providers and clients
• Integration of HIV and AIDS with SRH information and services
• Number of clinic-based health talks
• Information dissemination to the community through various media
• Adequacy and timely reporting e.g. service statistics
• Adequacy in reporting of finances
• Adherence to supplies logistic management guidelines
• Adequacy in reporting commodities
• Percentage change in the amount of income raised through clinic services
• Percentage change in number of new acceptors
• Percentage change in Couple Year of Protection (CYP)

Award Recipients

The clinics that have been recipients of this award include:

• Botha-Bothe clinic in the Northern Branch
• Maseru clinic
• The Male clinic

 Healthy Competition

The award system has been noted to influence positive competition and growth at the clinic level, which has helped make LPPA’s facilities the clinics of choice for many people in Lesotho. LPPA’s Program Director Ms. Makatleho Mphana says the practice has challenged clinics to be more innovative.

“The awards system has spurred clinics to engage in income generation activities -which are undertaken in an accountable manner. As the MA clinics compete for the annual award, they ensure that they give their best performance all year round. It encourages them to be innovative in their service delivery approaches. The awards system assures clients, LPPA volunteers, partners and donors that our service providers are committed to providing quality services to all,” she says. 

This initiative was identified as one of LPPA’s Good Practices during the 3rd Cycle of Accreditation. A Good Practice is an activity or practice that has been proven to work and yields positive results. The sharing of Good Practices by IPPF Member Associations offers learning experiences for their counterparts.

Learn more about Lesotho Planned Parenthood Association (LPPA) here. 

Also Read: 

What’s in a Game? ABUBEF’s use of Playing Cards for Youth SRHR Education

Mobile Clinics in Cape Verde: Taking Services Closer to the People

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