FACT SHEET
Quality Family Planning Services in the
United States
FEBRUARY 2015
The average woman who wants two children spends three decades – more than threequarters of her reproductive life – trying to avoid pregnancy.1 It’s no wonder that more than
99 percent of women have used contraception at some point in their lives.2 Given that half
of pregnancies in the United States are unintended, meaningful access to the full range of
contraceptive methods and high-quality contraceptive counseling is incredibly important for
ensuring that women are able to use the method that works best for them. It is essential
that women and health care providers have the tools they need to access and deliver highquality contraceptive care that enables women to plan their families and protect their
health.
Performance Measures Are Key to Quality Improvement
The quality and cost of many health care
services varies greatly from provider to
provider, state to state, and region to
region. While a growing number of health
care providers and consumers are
interested in improving health care
quality, many are without the information
necessary to properly assess the
performance of different aspects of our
health care system.
“As the U.S. health-care system evolves in
response to increased efforts to expand
health insurance coverage, contain costs,
and emphasize preventive care, providers
of family planning services will face new
challenges and opportunities for care
delivery.”
— Providing Quality Family Planning Services:
Recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and the U.S. Office of Population
Affairs, 2014.
Performance measures assess care
delivery and patient outcomes and help
health plans, hospitals, clinics and
individual clinicians understand the
quality of the health care services they pay for or provide. There are multiple types of
performance measures that assess aspects of care; they include clinical outcomes, how often
patients receive evidence-based care, and patient experiences. These performance measures
can:
 Help patients make more informed decisions about their care.
 Enable providers to improve the quality of care they deliver.
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While there are established performance measures to evaluate many aspects of health care,
to date there are virtually no widely recognized, commonly used measures for family
planning services. Without performance measures, identifying gaps in care, implementing
solutions and evaluating the effectiveness of those solutions is difficult. Family planning
stands to benefit from performance measures that will help clinicians continue to provide
the high-quality care they are committed to offering patients, and to improve reproductive
health outcomes and ensure women are getting the high-quality care they want and need.
Because measurement and evaluation are essential to improving care, performance
measures that evaluate the quality of family planning services, identify gaps, and facilitate
improvement are essential.
The Time is Now: High-Quality Family Planning Services for
All
According to the Institute of Medicine, high quality care has eight components: safety,
effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, accessibility, equality and value.
In April 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Office of
Population Affairs (OPA) issued recommendations for performance measures that could
help achieve each of those eight components for family planning services. They include:
 The proportion of female family planning clients at risk for unintended pregnancy who
adopt or continue use of an FDA-approved contraceptive method.
 Whether a family planning site dispenses or provides on-site a full range of FDAapproved contraceptive methods to meet the diverse reproductive needs and goals of
clients, including short-term hormonal, long-acting reversible contraception (LARC)
and emergency contraception (EC).
 The proportion of providers who follow the most current CDC recommendations on
contraceptive safety.
 The proportion of family planning clients who report their provider communicates
well, shows respect, spends enough time with them, and is informed about their
medical history.
 Whether a family planning site uses health information technology or electronic
health records to improve client reproductive health.
 Whether a family planning site offers language assistance at all points of contact for
the most frequently encountered language(s).
 Whether the family planning site offers services during expanded hours of operation.3
With the recognition that family planning is an area ripe for performance measure
development, various organizations are spearheading efforts to identify and develop a
robust set of performance measures for family planning and to integrate them into the
health care system. The measure development process should be a multi-stakeholder
process that increases transparency, accountability and quality, and amplifies the voices of
women and those in underserved communities.
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According to the CDC and OPA, “As the U.S. health-care system evolves in response to
increased efforts to expand health insurance coverage, contain costs, and emphasize
preventive care, providers of family planning services will face new challenges and
opportunities for care delivery.”4 There is great potential for providers, consumers, patient
advocates and other health care stakeholders to work together toward a more
comprehensive approach for improving and demonstrating the quality of family planning
services across the country.
1 Guttmacher Institute. (2014, July). Facts on Publicly Funded Contraceptive Services in the United States. Retrieved 20 May 2014, from
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contraceptive_serv.html
2 Guttmacher Institute. (2013, April). Contraceptive Use in the United States. Retrieved 20 May 2014, from http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html
3 Gavin, L, et. al. (2014, April). Providing Quality Family Planning Services: Recommendations of CDC and the U.S. Office of Population Affairs. Retrieved 20 May 2014, from
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr6304a1.htm?s_cid=rr6304a1_w#Tab4
4 Ibid 3
The National Partnership for Women & Families is a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group dedicated to promoting fairness in the workplace, access to quality health care and
policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family. More information is available at www.NationalPartnership.org.
© 2015 National Partnership for Women & Families. All rights reserved.
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