11 Basic Requirements for Sound Primary Health Care (PHC)

What is Primary Health Care (PHC)?

Primary health care (PHC) is vital and necessary health care for people that practical, socially acceptable, and scientifically sound methods and technology. A key set of goals of primary health care (PHC) includes equity, effectiveness, and affordability. To improve the quality of primary health care needs some important basic requirements that will help to improve and maintain the health of the population, as well as first-line services to restore people’s health when they are unwell.

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Basic Requirements for Sound Primary Health Care (8 A’s and 3 C’s):

The main aim of primary health care is to provide the best possible health services for everyone, everywhere in a country and the universal goal is to assure adequate access to quality care at a reasonable price. The following basic requirements for primary health care are needed to meet the goal of improving and maintaining the health of the population, as well as first-line services to restore people’s health when they are unwell.

1. Appropriateness:

Primary health care must be suitable or fit for a particular purpose, a person whether the service is needed at all about essential human needs, priorities, and policies.  Primary health care service has to be properly selected and carried out by trained personnel in the proper way. For example, A nurse should know how to give an injection correctly and safely, and use the ultrasound to provide antenatal care to pregnant women. Appropriate healthcare technologies are an important strategy for improving the availability and accessibility of healthcare services.

2. Availability:

Availability of medical and health care means the sufficient supply of resources and competent and skilled health workers that ease of community people for emergency or urgent service’s needs. If services are available and there is an adequate supply of equipment, then the opportunity to obtain health care exists and can easily improve community people’s health. Such TB drugs must be available in the primary health care center and available DOT workers who go to a patient’s home or worksite to facilitate the method.

3. Adequacy:

Adequacy means the ability to provide reasonable health care services for a particular purpose to meet the need and demands of the community and country. Adequacy doesn’t indicate excellence or abundance, or even more than what is necessary. For example: having 200,000 children in need of the polio vaccine, the number of vaccines should be equal to the demand.

4. Accessibility:

Access to health care means having “the timely use, reachable, and convenient health services to achieve the best health outcomes of community and country people.

5. Acceptability:

Acceptability is to be something that is considered to be socially pleasing to the receiver, agreeable, or within the realm of what is appropriate, or something tolerable. For example, if a maternal clinic is not good, pregnant women will visit it only when suffering severe pain or bleeding, and avoid recommended checkups.

Acceptability of primary health care depends on-

• Cultural sensitivity of health technology and intervention.
• User friendly and convenient.
• Treat all people with dignity.
• Right Target population.
• Maintain confidentiality and privacy.

6. Affordability:

Affordability means a person or community able to pay health care costs. The cost should be cheap enough for the people and resources of the individual and the country.

7. Assessability:

Accessibility means to set or determine the amount of medical care with a special payment that can be readily evaluated.

8. Accountability:

Accountability is an essential element in the health care system. It entails the procedures and processes by which health care workers justify and take responsibility for their activities. Accountable and honest Health care providers are constantly striving to improve quality and efficiency by using performance management systems and quality improvement initiatives.

• Making the boundaries of everybody role very clear.
• Making duties clear and ensuring have the right training to carry them out safely and effectively.
• Ensuring adequate support and supervision.
• Providing agreed protocols to guide care delivery.
• Offering opportunities to develop in the role.
• Making issues around delegation clear.

9. Completeness:

Completeness means the quality of being whole or perfect and having nothing missing. In primary health care, completeness is suitable and whole care to all aspects of a medical problem such as prevention, screening, early diagnosis, treatment, follow up measures, and rehabilitation without any restriction.  Such as: providing physiotherapy for the hemiplegia after a cerebrovascular stroke and continuous follow-ups for diabetic patients after describing drugs to them.

10. Comprehensiveness:

The comprehensiveness of care means providing care for all types of health problems, not just the medical and physical ones. By comprehensive care in primary health care, they provide multiple physical and emotional health support of a patient over a period of time in relationship to family, life events, and environment and reduce hospitalization, long-term care placement, and mortality.

11. Continuity:

Continuity of care means provides quality health care to community people over time. It is a method by which community people and health care team are cooperatively comprised of continuous health care management toward the goal of high quality, cost-effective medical care. Continuity of care is important for chronic diseases: diabetes, hypertension, ischemic heart disease. Because these diseases if not controlled, ’ll cause severe problems, however, if they’re controlled the mortality rate will be greatly reduced.

Maria Mona

Maria Khatun Mona is a Founder and Editor of Nursing Exercise Blog. She is a Nursing and Midwifery Expert. Currently she is working as a Registered Nurse at Evercare Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has great passion in writing different articles on Nursing and Midwifery. Mail her at “[email protected]”