Chou VB, et al. - In order to explore the global effect of improvement in the quality of care, they applied a linking approach, which combines health facility and population-level survey data to estimate baseline for a subset of important evidence-based interventions. In 81 countries, they modeled intervention coverage by setting current levels of reported utilization as the final country-specific targets for 2020. The data indicate that efforts to close the quality gap would still provide substantial benefits at current levels of access or utilization. With predicted mortality rate declines of 21%–32% on average, gains from this first step would be significant if the quality was raised for selected antenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal interventions to benefit pregnant women and newborns seeking care. In this quality improvement analysis, interventions provided at or around the time of childbirth are most critical and accounted for 64% of the impact overall estimated.