Optimizing Performance and Quality

Stages of OPQ

  1. Stage 1

    Describe context

  2. Stage 2

    Support stakeholder engagement, ownership, and leadership

  3. Stage 3

    Identify gaps and strengths

  4. Stage 4

    Find root causes

  5. Stage 5

    Select and design interventions

  6. Stage 6

    Implement interventions

  7. Stage 7

    Monitor and evaluate

GO TO STAGES

Welcome to IntraHealth’s website for Optimizing Performance and Quality: Stages, Steps, and Tools.

What is OPQ: Stages, Steps, and Tools?

Optimizing Performance and Quality (OPQ) is IntraHealth’s signature approach for problem solving and capacity building. It is a stakeholder-driven, cyclical process for analyzing human and organizational performance and setting up interventions to improve performance and quality or build on strengths and successes.

The OPQ approach, refined over the years, has been used by country leaders in over 15 countries throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia to strengthen health sector governance through greater accountability and transparency, broadened partnerships, and measurable results in improved service quality.

The OPQ process builds capacity within an organization to recognize and address problems or performance gaps on an ongoing basis. There are seven stages. Each stage provides evidence-based guidance and steps to follow, with a suite of tools to help you through the process.

This site is for IntraHealth staff and partners to use in strengthening health systems. The website will walk you through the stages, steps, and tools in the OPQ process.

What can OPQ do for you?

OPQ offers a methodology and tools that can be used independently or together with other improvement techniques and tools. You can use the OPQ process to improve the performance of individuals, teams, organizations, governing bodies, and systems. Use OPQ to:

  • Build participative partnerships with key stakeholders and champions to better link policies and decisions with the needs of their clients
  • Assess how well your team or organization is meeting agreed upon standards or reaching expected outcomes
  • Determine how well services are meeting client needs (assessing, for example, whether services are equitable, youth-friendly, or gender-sensitive)
  • Identify gaps in services and performance and identify root causes
  • Design and implement appropriate solutions that address gaps
  • Define indicators for monitoring, documenting, and evaluating progress toward objectives
  • Establish a sustainable process to continuously measure progress, build on successes, and move from good to great!

See the Countries section to learn about IntraHealth’s recent work to build capacity and improve the performance and quality of health services, health workforce training and education systems, and systems for supervision and management.

IntraHealth provides support to public and private sector organizations in using OPQ, with onsite training, consultation, and capacity building that allow individuals to apply OPQ in a variety of environments. As IntraHealth is also continuously improving its own products and services—send us your feedback on the elements that you find most useful or suggest improvements that you recommend for this guide. We also invite you to send your own adapted tools that may enhance this service.

For a full description, download the OPQ Guide. For more information and to send feedback, contact us.

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