The Kyrgyz Health Results Based Financing project was approved by the World Bank in April 2013 and took effect in July 2014. The project's objectives are to pilot performance-based payments and/or enhanced supervision for quality of maternal and neonatal care in randomly selected rayon hospitals, and to strengthen the government’s and providers’ capacity in performance-based contracting and monitoring and evaluating for results. Researchers from the World Bank designed blocked triplet-matched randomized impact evaluation to study the impact of this project. The study aims to generate information that can be used to guide quality of care improvement activities for maternal and newborn care in hospitals at the district, regional and central referral levels. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the reduction of preventable maternal and newborn deaths through increased use and quality of known life-saving interventions. The baseline data, documented here, was collected from February 2012 to April 2013. The primary outcome measures for the baseline survey were overall facility readiness, particularly with regards to complicated labor and delivery, quality of antenatal care, quality of labor and delivery, infection control, management of complications of labor and delivery, essential newborn care, newborn resuscitation, harmful health practices, and health worker knowledge. The baseline survey was conducted in all 63 secondary hospitals in Kyrgyz Republic, most of which had corresponding primary health care clinics. The 63 hospitals were the main focus of the quality of care survey for maternal and neonatal health while on-site primary care clinics were included in the sample to assess the availability and quality of antenatal care. The midline data collection for the impact evaluation is planned for fall 2016.
