Purchasing is one of the three core health financing functions, together with revenue raising and pooling. There is growing consensus that countries need to shift from passive towards more strategic purchasing in order to get more health for the money. Many low- and middle-income countries are making efforts to shift towards strategic purchasing, but challenges remain. In this context, cross-country learning can provide practical lessons to overcome implementation bottlenecks.
In order to make progress on this agenda, the WHO Department of Health Systems Governance and Financing and the Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Centre (SPARC) organized a full-day pre-conference workshop at the Fifth African Health Economics and Policy Association Scientific Conference.
The workshop included the following sessions:
Session 1 - Overview of strategic health purchasing: functions and policy instruments
Session 2 - Aligning mixed provider payment systems
Session 3 - Governance for strategic purchasing: why does this matter and what are the issues
Session 4 – Building information systems for strategic purchasing
The event brought together policy-makers, researchers and practitioners to exchange and learn from each other. The workshop allowed discussion on a number of key issues on the policy and research agenda and gave attention to the importance of understanding the mix in provider payment systems, governance arrangements for strategic purchasing, and information needs. The discussion also highlighted that processes necessary to move towards more strategic purchasing are well documented only in a limited number of countries. Stronger monitoring and evaluation of purchasing reforms should be part of the future research agenda. Finally, country examples showed that strategic purchasing reforms are often a gradual process, with a number of different entry points for implementation at country level.