A change package is an evidence based set of changes that are critical to the improvement of care. This Change Package provides ideas to improve the quality of care in hospital labor rooms and newborn care units. It was developed as part of the Safe Care, Saving Lives program which worked to improve the quality of care in public and private neonatal intensive care units in two states in India.
The Change Package includes a description of Potentially Better Practices (PBPs), essentially a list of clinical practices that have been shown to be effective in improving care around three leading causes of newborn death: sepsis, birth asphyxia, and complications from premature birth. The package also gives providers a way of improving those practices and developing new ones, which is described as a change idea. A “change idea” is a change made to an existing process with the goal of improving the process and its associated health outcomes. Not all changes bring about improvement, but all improvement requires change.
The Change Package gives examples of change ideas that led to process improvement in Safe Care, Saving Lives facilities. The document is not designed to be comprehensive or exhaustive but rather as a guide that other neonatal units or providers can use to improve the quality of newborn care they offer. This toolkit was created alongside the Safe Care, Saving Lives Change Package for Quality Improvement in Newborn Care and Standard Operating Procedures.