Strategic purchasing: An emerging agenda in Africa …...Strategic purchasing: An emerging agenda in...
Transcript of Strategic purchasing: An emerging agenda in Africa …...Strategic purchasing: An emerging agenda in...
Strategic purchasing:
An emerging agenda in Africa for
Universal Health Coverage
30 September 2016
Rabat Inke Mathauer, MSc., PhD
Health Financing Policy Team
WHO, Geneva
What is purchasing?
It is the process of paying for services:
relates to the relationship between purchaser and provider
refers to the allocation of resources from the purchaser to
health service providers and concerns:
– Benefit package design: Which services and drugs to finance, and at
what level?
– Resource allocation and provider payment methods: how are
providers paid and at what rates?
– Selection of providers: from which types of providers?
occurs in all countries and in all types of health financing
systems
Medicines: underuse of generics,
higher than necessary prices
Services: medical errors, sub-
optimal quality of care
Medicines: inappropriate or
ineffective use
Services: inappropriate hospital
size (low use of infrastructure)
Medicines: use of sub-standard
and counterfeit medicines
Services: inappropriate hospital
admissions and length of stay
Services and products:
oversupply and overuse of
equipment, investigations,
procedures
Health workers: inappropriate or
costly staff mix, unmotivated
workers
Interventions: inefficient mix or
inappropriate level of strategies
Leakages: waste, corruption,
fraud
Ten leading sources of inefficiency
Source: World Health Report (2010), Chapter 4
An estimated 20-40% of health resources are wasted
Medicines: underuse of generics,
higher than necessary prices
Services: medical errors, sub-
optimal quality of care
Medicines: inappropriate or
ineffective use
Services: inappropriate hospital
size (low use of infrastructure)
Medicines: use of sub-standard
and counterfeit medicines
Services: inappropriate hospital
admissions and length of stay
Services and products:
oversupply and overuse of
equipment, investigations,
procedures
Health workers: inappropriate or
costly staff mix, unmotivated
workers
Interventions: inefficient mix or
inappropriate level of strategies
Leakages: waste, corruption,
fraud
Ten leading sources of inefficiency
An estimated 20-40% of health resources are wasted
Some of these inefficiencies can
be addressed through
better purchasing,
others are to be addressed by
improved procurement.
Addressing efficiency requires several entry points
• Buying goods/supplies and medicines
• Determining the type of goods to buy
• Price and volume negotations
• Paying service providers
o Provider payment methods and rates
• Contracting with public and private providers
Purchasing Procurement
Purchaser(s)
Purchaser(s), hospitals
central procurement agency
Human resource
management
Infrastructure
planning
At stewardship level:
What is strategic purchasing?
• «Linking payments to information on performance and
health needs of the population»
• «Active, evidence-based engagement in defining the
service-mix and volume, selecting the provider-mix,
and deciding how to purchase»
through
– Payment methods and payment rates that create incentives for
providers to manage their expenditures and/or focus on
quantity or quality performance metrics
– (Selective) contracting, accreditation, performance monitoring
Moving from passive to strategic purchasing
“Passive” – resource allocation
using norms
– little/no selection of providers
– little/no quality monitoring
– price and quality taker
Passive Strategic
• “Strategic” – payment systems that
create deliberate incentives for efficiency and quality
– selective contracting
– quality improvement and rewards
– price and quality maker
Slide from WHO Advanced HF training, Tunis 2014
Align funding and incentives with promised health services
Promote quality in
service delivery
Promote accountability of
providers and purchasers to the
population
Enhance equitable
distribution of resources
Manage expenditure
growth & promote efficiency
Objectives for strategic purchasing
No progress towards UHC
without efficient spending
“more health for the money”
(WHO 2010, Ch. 4)
Align funding and incentives with promised health services
Promote quality in
service delivery
Promote accountability of
providers and purchasers to the
population
Enhance equitable
distribution of resources
Manage expenditure
growth & promote efficiency
Objectives for strategic purchasing
Countries “cannot simply
spend their way to UHC”
(Kutzin et al. 2016)
Closed-ended/ budget-neutral
provider payment
Incentives to limit high-cost services
Emphasis on Primary
Care
Procurement: e.g., negotiation of drug prices
What does effective strategic
purchasing look like in practice?
Source: Japan-WB Partnership
Program on UHC 2014
But we often spend
without knowing what we buy
Would you support a system that purchases – A very vaguely defined benefit package or a wide package that is
effectively not deliverable?
Would you support a system that purchases – Ineffective services, ineffective drugs
– High volume of expensive diagnostic and curative services at the expense of cost-effective public health measures and low cost curative services?
Would you support a system that pays for – Services without information on need and effectiveness
Many systems do the above to some extent! Slide from WHO Advanced HF training, Tunis 2014
Current challenges
to moving towards strategic purchasing (1)
Weak stewardship for reform in general, and weak or
absent governance of purchasing functions in
particular
Unclear mandates of purchasing agencies and
inadequate levels of autonomy of providers and
purchasers;
Piloting mode of reform efforts with insufficient
orientation towards institutionalization
– E.g., stand-alone performance-based financing mechanisms
Current challenges
to moving towards strategic purchasing (2)
Existing public financial management regulations as a
hurdle to implementing more output-oriented payment
mechanisms;
Inadequate generation and use of data related to
provider payment for wider system monitoring and for
informing decision-makers;
Inadequate global information sharing on strategic
purchasing experience and best practices, what works and
does not work.
2. Mixed provider
payment systems
4. Information
management
systems for effective
purchasing
Some key topics and issues we think
need more attention
3. Benefit package
design and
alignment with PPM
1. Governance
around the
purchasing function
1. Governance around the purchasing functions
Need for
clear mandates of purchasing agencies and adequate
levels of autonomy of providers and purchasers
Coherent decision making structure (and division of labour
in decision-making) on purchasing aspects
Oversight and accountability of purchasers, citizen
participation
(Institutional) leadership to shift to more strategic
purchasing
Ensuring effective purchasing market (e.g., single or
multiple) and institutional setup for purchasing (e.g.
purchaser-provider split)
2. Mixed provider payment systems
Seeing the ‘mixed’ in mixed provider payment systems
– Shifting from a messy mix to a coherent mix
Finding a context-appropriate mix of provider payment
methods with aligned incentives
Let’s not forget: Improving budget execution
Integrating Performance Based Financing
mechanisms into the system
3. Benefit package design and alignment with PPM
Realising the principle of “whatever is promised, can
be delivered”
– based on a transparent process that determined which specific
health services are included and which ones are excluded
– People are aware of what is covered
Finding the right specificity level in BP design
– Institutionalization of BP revision and role of HTA
Focus on pricing and less on costing of BP (need to
be clear on the purpose of costing)
Need to align BP and provider payment methods
4. Information management systems
Need for data and information to
– improve purchasing and provider payment
– improve planning to meet population needs
– monitor and evaluate
Clarity in what data is needed and how to make use of
it
Need to set up national, integrated (non-fragmented)
health information management systems
Thank you very much!
Questions? Comments!
Purchasers and
patients
Providers and
industry
Policy makers
“I’ve got a strange
feeling we’ve been
going round in
circles”
Source of slide: A. Maynard