Universal Health Coverage (UHC) means that everyone is able to use needed, good quality health services without fear of financial ruin as a consequence. Thus, UHC embodies specific goals and objectives of health systems, namely reducing the gap between the need for and use of health services, good quality of those services, and financial protection (the “UHC goals”), assessed at the level of the entire health system and population.

The World Health Report 2010 noted that getting “more health for the money”, i.e. improving efficiency, is of vital importance on the path to UHC, as this allows for greater progress on one or a combination of these UHC goals from a given level of health spending. A concern with addressing inefficiencies is also reflected in the Tunis Declaration on Value for Money, Sustainability and Accountability in the Health Sector.

Health systems exhibit inefficiencies to varying degrees, and health financing arrangements often contribute to such problems due to inappropriate incentives. Countries can and do undertake financing and related reforms aimed at addressing these inefficiencies, but their experiences have not been well documented. Hence, as one of the cross-cutting initiatives identified in the WHO Plan of Action on Health System Financing for Universal Coverage, WHO seeks to produce and disseminate country case examples of such reforms and synthesize lessons learned.

A collection of 10-15 country cases spanning the Asian, African and Latin American regions have been commissioned.

Oxford's team will synthesise the findings from these country cases and produce a synthesise report with policy recommendations on how to use financing reforms to improve efficiency.

Funded by: World Health Organization