EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR PROVISION OF QUALITY ASSURANCE TO NON-FRANCHISED FACILITIES IN SUPPORT OF AN ADOLESCENT AND YOUTH SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE H

Background

Tiko Africa is a global non-profit organisation that is headquartered in South Africa. Our main aim is to motivate young people to make positive Reproductive Health choices using innovative technology, real-time data, and behavioural insights. Through our digital platform, Tiko, and our local ecosystem of partners, we connect Tiko members to existing local service providers to meet their Sexual Reproductive Health and wellness needs. As part of this ecosystem, TIKO provides access to Quality-assured Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) services through a network of private and public health facilities and pharmacies. To ensure quality in the relevant services accessed by adolescents and youth through the Tiko platform, TIKO is looking to work with a pool of Independent Quality Assurance (QA) Providers to provide Quality Assurance (QA) baseline audit and Quality Improvement (QI) to the private non-franchised health facilities within the ecosystem of Wakiso District. Provision of Quality Assurance services will be done through what will be called the TIKO QA Marketplace.

The independent QA provider will ensure that the private non-franchised facilities are:

At the expected level to quality to provide quality Sexual and Reproductive Health services & Rights (SRHR) to adolescent youths that include contraceptives, HIV testing services, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), antiretroviral treatment (ART) and mental health by conducting;

• Clinical Quality Audits to identify QA gaps in Capacity building/ training and Competency Assessments of the service providers.
• Continuous support supervision to correctly and accurately offer Adolescent youth-friendly AYSRH services by addressing the identified QA gaps as part of Quality improvement plan and continuous support.
• Ensuring updated facilities/service providers licences and re-certification requirements according to the respective governing bodies by law in the country..
• Data quality assessments to ensure good data quality through proper documentation and reporting to the respective districts.

Scope of Work (SOW) and Expectations

TIKO UG is registered in Uganda and has its main office in Kampala located at Regus Offices, 4th floor Acacia Mall , operating in Kampala and Wakiso District for now.

TIKO expects all facilities onboarded on the Tiko platform to offer AYSRH services and maintain high levels of Quality in service provision. Prior to working with TIKO, a service readiness and availability assessment (SARA) will be conducted by TIKO in the facilities to ensure they meet the minimum basic requirements for service delivery. This forms part of due diligence done by TIKO to ensure that private health providers boarded onto the Tiko Platform meet the required legal threshold, have the required infrastructure and goodwill for AYSRH service delivery.

Therefore, the contracted independent QA providers from the TIKO QA Marketplace will be expected to provide Quality Assurance (QA) support Supervision to private non-franchised facilities. The Scope of work will include the following activities:

• Clinical Quality and competency assessment audits, baseline needs assessments and development of quality improvement plans (QIP);
• Identify the Training and competency assessments needs
• Assess compliance with clinical regulations and licensing requirements.

Below is a detail on the QA expectations of each independent QA provider that will participate in the Tiko QA Marketplace.

• Conduct a clinical audit and baseline assessment per facility to inform a detailed Quality Improvement Plan(QIP)
• Conduct competency assessments to identify gaps and training needs for each Tiko service provider.
• Conduct competency upskilling and reskilling to improve skills, knowledge and attitude of TIKO service providers based on the competency assessment findings and identified gaps
• Ensure that staff operating in each facility are qualified and certified by the respective bodies to provide services and that noted cases of non-compliance are addressed in a timely manner to ensure the facilities remain active on the TIKO platform.
• Submit timely QA reports, which will include QIPs and evidence of support supervision visit activities, as well as compliance to TIKO relevant policies as highlighted in the contract.
• Report and escalate all safeguarding incidences to TIKO in line with the Safeguarding Escalation TIKO processes.
• Report all adverse events to TIKO QA Specialist within 24 hours for assistance/Support.

TIKO will support successful applicants to undertake the above scope of work with a package of tools, Clinical audit checklists, codes of conduct and QA reporting templates to ensure that they successfully undertake the above activities.

Examples of Expected Deliverables

Through our Tiko QA Marketplace, TIKO will contract QA providers (QA 1 ) as follows

Deliverables for Independent QA Provider 1

Main Role: QA Auditor

Main Deliverable: Independent QA Audit Report

• Clinical audits: clinical facility audits conducted for each facility on the TIKO platform annually to identify QA Quality Improvement gaps.
• Training needs and competency assessment: competency and training needs gaps identified on the different health offers for each facility/active service provider.
• QIPs: Quality Improvement Plans (QIP) developed using gaps identified from SARA, and the clinical audit (including identifying infrastructural, process, and documentation gaps), and training needs assessments.
• Preceding QIP appraisals: achievements and rectification of gaps from the previous QIPs confirmed and noted
• Report: final summary report (Independent QA1 audit report) from the assessments produced, shared and handed over to the TIKO QA Specialist.
• Report on learnings and Recommendations: learnings documented, presented and discusse with TIKO QA Specialist.

Examples of Roles and Responsibilities for Independent QA Provider 1:

Quality Assurance Auditor

Quality Audits: Quality assessment to identify the service delivery gaps per facility in the specific areas of service provision.

QIP Development: Development of SMART action plans for the identified gaps per facility assessed.

Report preparation: prepare both a narrative and quantitative reports for each facility assessed for presentation to the TIKO Quality Assurance team.

Means of Verification Examples

Facility specific reports submitted by QA Provider 1

Review of Supervision records.

Verification visits to the assessed facilities.

Period of the Engagement

On a needs basis, from February 2025. The selected QA service providers will form part of the pre-qualified pool of QA Providers for the Tiko QA Marketplace.