The Effect of Health Service Quality on Health Facility Choice and Health Outcomes in Malawi

Abstract

We study the impact of health care service quality on health facility choice and health outcomes in Malawi. We use Malawi Demographic and Health Survey (MDHS) 2015 and Malawi Service Provision Assessment (MSPA) 2013-2014 to examine the effect. MSPA provides many useful health care service quality information that has not been examined much in the previous studies. We create health care service quality measures to represent infrastructure quality, medical supplies quality and health facility management quality. We examine the impact of these quality measures on the demand for health services and health outcomes. We find that people who live closer to quality health facilities are more likely to utilize health services such as facility delivery. However, we do not find strong and significant evidences that healthcare quality is associated with positive health outcomes due to the insufficient data and the weak identification strategies.