Performance-based grants for reproductive health in the Philippines
Policy brief
Over the past decade, performance-based grants (PBGs) have emerged as a new set of interventions in which specific actions are requested, received and paid for. They reward results with payment, aiming principally to resolve issues of access, utilization and provider performance (Meesen et al., 2006; Canavan, Toonen & Elovainio 2008). Defined here as “the provision of incentives to improve predetermined performance actions or targets”, PBGs seek to change the behaviour − of individuals, of centres and clinics, and of the system itself (Jack, 2003; Eichler 2006; Meesen et al., 2006; Oxman & Fretheim, 2008).1
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1The term performance-based grants (PBGs) will be used throughout this brief. In the literature, PBGs are
also known as (though not necessarily synonymous with) results-based financing (RBF) (Oxman & Fretheim,
2008; Brenzel 2009) performance-based financing (PBFs) (Hecht et al., 2004; Canavan et al., 2008; Toonen
et al., 2009), and pay-for-performance (P4P; PFP) (Eichler, 2006; Mathematica Inc.).