BACKGROUND: Even though quality maternal care is crucial for the well-being of women and their newborns, the inferior quality of antenatal care in rural Ethiopia is a timely concern. This study aimed to investigate the effects of combining antenatal care visits at health posts and health centers on improving antenatal care quality in rural Ethiopia.

METHODS: Using the 2019 Ethiopia Health Extension Program assessment done by MERQ, we extracted and analyzed the survey responses of 2,660 women who had received at least one antenatal visit from a primary health care unit. We measured the cumulative count of quality of antenatal care using the Donabedian model. To model the differences in the quality of antenatal care at health posts and health centers, we used zero-truncated Poisson regression and reported incidence risk ratios with their 95% confidence intervals.

RESULTS: The quality of antenatal care increased by 20% (adjusted IRR= 1.20 [1.12–1.28]) when antenatal care reception was mixed at health posts and health centers, compared to those who received all antenatal care only from health posts. Quality differences based on socioeconomic status and setting variations were observed as predictors of quality of care, even if women received antenatal care at both health posts and health centers.

CONCLUSIONS: Combining antenatal care provision from health posts and health centers should be sustained as one of the antenatal care quality improvement strategies in rural parts of Ethiopia while ensuring the equitable provision of quality care across socioeconomic groups and between agrarian and pastoral settings.

KEYWORDS: quality of health care, antenatal care, primary health care