Data on health care-seeking behaviors are instrumental for identifying gaps in access to health services, an issue particularly important in the maternal and child health field as reflected in the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. However, lack of basic data, including data on health care services coverage at the community level, is an identified barrier to effective policymaking.1
The facility-based delivery (FBD) rate is an essential indicator because improving facility-based delivery with skilled birth attendants is an important strategy for lowering maternal mortality.2 Globally, the formula to compute the FBD rate from routine health information data is a simple one: the number of FBDs in a population divided by the total number of deliveries. However, at the community level, this formula might need to be redefined and clarified in terms of who should be counted in the numerator and denominator.
In the Philippines, the country's public health information system, the Field Health Services Information System, mandates the FBD rate to be occurrence-based, meaning that only deliveries that occur in a given place are counted:
As a basis for reporting, Barangay Health Workers (community health volunteers who provide health promotion and education) are tasked to track all pregnancy cases in their designated barangays (smallest administrative unit) through routine household visits, and nurses and midwives are in charge of …