In 2015, Nairobi County, where Jacaranda Health has set up its hospitals, was ranked 3rd among counties in Kenya with the highest burden of maternal mortality. Jacaranda Health’s mission is to transform the delivery of maternal and child healthcare in those settings and to demonstrate that high quality, affordable care can be delivered at the community level.

It has been proven that low-cost interventions to reduce mortality are feasible and effective. Jacaranda Health has packaged these low-cost interventions to sustainably reduce maternal mortality rates of Kenyan mothers and their babies in an innovative way, implementing the SafeCare standards. This is their story.

Jacaranda Health serves a large and growing low-income group of women living in the peri-urban settlements of Nairobi. Since 2012, the hospital has provided high-quality maternal health care to over 17,500 women and has delivered more than 2,225 babies.

Jacaranda Health embarked on the SafeCare journey to increase visibility and demand for better quality in health service delivery and to prove that at the community level, one can lead and deliver services that positively transform the community.

For Jacaranda Health, applying the SafeCare methodology amplified the need and benefits of implementing international recognized standards in resource constrained settings to build efficiency and transparency, drive accountability and ensure optimal clinical and business outcomes-demonstrating the business case for quality in health service delivery.

SafeCare was implemented in Jacaranda’s first facility- a nine bed birthing center in 2014 where at baseline, a level 2 was achieved. Lessons learned were incorporated in the design and roll out of their current facility, opened in September 2015. On the first assessment, the new facility achieved a SafeCare level 5 score, becoming the first in East Africa to achieve this level of quality rating by scoring 94 points out of 100.

The early successes of the quality improvement program positioned Jacaranda Health as a center of excellence.  The local County Government recognized the achievement as both an excellent intervention and business model and nominated its senior staff to be trained by Jacaranda Health on quality improvement. Other hospitals, both for-profit and non-profit, duplicated Jacaranda Health’s example to stay ahead of the competition.