Timeliness

The ability of the health system to provide primary care services to patients when they need them, with acceptable and reasonable wait times and at days and times that are convenient to them.

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Timeliness

The ability of the health system to provide primary care services to patients when they need them, with acceptable and reasonable wait times and at days and times that are convenient to them.

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Safety

The practice of following procedures and guidelines in the delivery of PHC services in order to avoid harm to the people for whom care is intended.

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Efficiency

Efficiency refers to the ability of a health system to attain its desired objective(s) with the available resources, while minimizing waste and maximizing capacities to deliver care to those who need it.

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Effectiveness

Effectiveness measures whether health care and services are driven by evidence, adhere to established standards, and achieve their intended result.

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People-Centeredness

People-centeredness means organizing the health system around the comprehensive needs of people rather than individual diseases.

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First Contact Accessibility

The capacity of a primary care system to serve as the first point of contact, or a patient's entry point to the health system, for most of a person's health needs.

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Coordination

Coordination of care refers to the system's ability to oversee and manage patient care over time and across levels of care to ensure appropriate follow-up, minimize the risk of error, and prevent complications.

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Continuity

Continuity is the degree to which a patient experiences a series of discrete healthcare events as coherent and consistent with their medical needs and personal context.

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Comprehensiveness

The provision of holistic and appropriate care across promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative, chronic and palliative service needs.

Indicators
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Cancer stage at diagnosis (by cancer)
Related Concepts

Delivering high-quality primary health care requires many elements of the health system working effectively together. This mapping explores how different concepts with the framework relate to one another.

Upstream elements are those that are required to develop or improve a particular concept. Absence or poor performance of an upstream element is expected to negatively impact the performance of the concept of focus.

Complementary elements are those where improvements or developments in this area will be mutually beneficial to the concept of focus but not required for improvement.

UPSTREAM CONCEPTS
COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTS
UPSTREAM SUBDOMAINS
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PHC Workforce
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Management of Services
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Service Availability & Readiness
Timeliness
COMPLEMENTARY SUBDOMAINS
Information & Technology
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Information systems innovations like appointment systems can make facility flow more efficient and thereby more timely. Telemedicine also supports timely access in hard-to-reach populations.
Physical Infrastructure
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Well-designed facility infrastructure supports efficient facility flow and shorter waiting times for timely access to care.
Purchasing & Payment Systems
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Financial protection systems, including insurance, can help to remove barriers to access and serve as accountability and an incentive for timeliness. However, this alone cannot guarantee timely access to care.
Access
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Access (geographic, financial) can help to promote timely care when a patient needs it.
Efficiency
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Efficiency of services in workflow and how staff and providers spend time and conduct appointments can help lead to shorter wait times.
First Contact Accessibility
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Establishing PHC as the first point of entry to the health system can help to promote timely access to care.
Organization of Services
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Team-based care strategies (e.g. staggered shifts, distribution of work) can improve timeliness of access and care delivery.
Population Health Management
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Sub-national governance structures should have mechanisms to solicit input from the community to understand issues in access to timely care and identify feasible and acceptable responses that will tangibly improve timeliness of care.
Resilient Facilities and Services
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Resilient facilities and services help to ensure that care can remain timely and accessible even during public health emergencies.
Improvement Strategies

Each PHCPI Improvement Strategy is designed to help decision-makers begin to plan and enact reforms within their own context by providing additional resources and evidence on the topic, as well as practical recommendations for action.

The explainer graphic below presents a quick overview of the concept of Service Quality, including Timeliness. View the full Improvement Strategy on Service Quality to learn more.

Service Quality explainer graphic

Potential Funding opportunities

Interested in understanding how this topic intersects with investment opportunities from major funding streams? The Global Frameworks Mapping provides a starting point to help identify and make connections between key PHC topics, relevant funding initiatives, and investment cases.

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Supplies Partnership 2021-2030
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Strategy 2030: Achieving a Prosperous, Inclusive, Resilient, and Sustainable Asia and the Pacific
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HIV