Fiscal space, public financial management, and health financing: sustaining progress towards UHC: implementation of the collaborative agenda

Overview

In April 2016, WHO’s Department of Health Systems Governance and Financing convened a  follow-up meeting to bring together representatives of national health and finance authorities, as well as other public finance and health financing policy experts and practitioners, to discuss key issues aimed at enhancing productive health financing dialog as countries seek to move towards universal health coverage (UHC). It provided an opportunity to take-stock of implementation progress under the overall Collaborative Agenda on Fiscal Space, Public Financial Management and Health Financing, as well as to identify key area of focus moving forward.

The key messages from the meeting include:

• Health financing and PFM systems need to be aligned if they are to meet their common objectives of equitable access to quality health services. Productive and active dialog between Ministries of Health and Finance is necessary to make progress on the UHC agenda.
• While resources for health should be consolidated and accounted for in the overall government budget, there should be flexibility for purchasing mechanisms to help ensure that priority services and interventions reach the populations that need them.
• Transition from aid and sustainable financing issues are about ensuring sufficient revenues and managing expenditures. Transition provides an opportunity for a system-wide approach to improving the efficiency with which resources are used.
• Fiscal space for health assessments should be embedded in the overall government budgeting cycle and should explicitly take into account political economy considerations.