Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

• Good Practices in Health Financing : Lessons from Reforms in Low and Middle-Income Countries

  Waters, Hugh R.; Schieber, George J.; Gottret, Pablo (Washington, DC : World Bank, 2012-05-25)

  This volume focuses on nine countries that have completed, or are well along in the process of carrying out, major health financing reforms. These countries have significantly expanded their people's health care coverage or maintained such coverage after prolonged political or economic shocks. In doing so, this report seeks to expand the evidence base on good performance in health financing reforms in low- and middle-income countries. The countries chosen for the study were Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Estonia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, and Vietnam. With health at the center of global development policy on humanitarian as well as economic and health security grounds, the international community and developing countries are closely focused on scaling up health systems to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), improving financial protection, and ensuring long-term financing to sustain these gains. With the scaling up of aid, both donors and countries have come to realize that money alone cannot buy health gains or prevent impoverishment due to catastrophic medical bills. This realization has sent policy makers looking for reliable evidence about what works and what does not, but they have found little to guide their search.
• Republic of Uruguay Integrated National Health System : Analysis of the Governability of the SNIS Benefit Plan

  World Bank (Washington, DC, 2014-02-03)

  Today the health reform in Uruguay is a mature, ongoing process in which major progress has been consolidated. At the same time, like all systems, it faces challenges in the immediate, medium, and long term, and how they are resolved will not only shape the ultimate outcome of many of the processes currently under way, and but will also impact the sustainability of the accomplishments so far. The purpose of this study is to contribute to development of the integrated national health system (SNIS) by analyzing and identifying policy options aimed at improving its governance, equity, efficiency, and sustainability through the government's use of control variables in order to achieve and maintain conditions of governability and efficiency, which will contribute to the stability and sustainability of the results. The present study analyzes the main variables that Uruguay has at its disposal to manage a central aspect of regulating the sector namely, the plan of benefits that the population receives to cover their health needs. This plan has important consequences for both health and the economy. The specific objectives of the study were to analyze the following three aspects of the SNIS: (i) the conditions of governance and governability of its benefit plan, (ii) methodological aspects of determining the premium to be received by insurers, and (iii) the capacity of the management information systems that are being used to monitor and evaluate the benefit plan. The document has three sections: (i) background; (ii) health coverage: critical aspects that affect its governability, specifically: (a) the benefit plan and the conditions of its governance, (b) the methodologies used to determine the premium, and (c) the health information systems used to monitor and evaluate the benefit plan; and (iii) conclusions and policy options. Finally, there are seven annexes that provide details on the topics discussed.
• Private Health Sector Assessment in Mali : The Post-Bamako Initiative Reality

  Rouzaud, François; Lamiaux, Mathieu; Woods, Wendy (World Bank, 2012-04-04)

  This country assessment of the private
 health sector in Mali is part of a series of studies
 designed to deepen understanding of ways to enhance the
 health policy framework, business environment, and
 investment climate in which the private health sector
 operates in African countries. The Malian health system has
 evolved dramatically since the middle of the 1980s. A large
 part of the analysis in this report relies on the
 reprocessing and the mining of existing databases, the
 financial and macroeconomic models based on those data, and
 elements reconstructed through triangulation. Those
 calculations proved indispensable for assessing the main
 demographic trends in the private sector, for estimating the
 growth of community centers (CSCOMs) and private mutual
 insurance, and identifying how to reinforce them. The growth
 of the private sector is further held back by insufficient
 educational preparation for practice in the private sector
 and in rural areas. For-profit and not-for-profit health
 care providers, pharmacies, and schools should be given
 beefier access to funding during start-up. Other financial
 engineering strategies (participation, etc.) could also be
 devised. The government of Mali has an opportunity to take
 advantage the large and dynamic private health sector in
 contributing to its national health care objectives and
 outcomes. The study describes the various instruments of
 stewardship towards the private sector that could be used
 such as information, regulations, financing and direct
 provision of public services in areas of significant market failure.