Improving Comparability and Availability of Private Health Expenditure Data in Health Accounts in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Case of India

Abstract

National Health Accounts is a well-designed and accepted tool used globally to track the flow of funds in the health sector. It systematically analyzes the sources of funds, their use by different providers and delivery of services in the health sector. Providing a framework to collect and analyze health spending and its use, this tool provides inputs in designing policy, monitoring and evaluation of various programmes. Producing national health accounts on a regular basis in India is fraught with many challenges and lack of accurate data for some components of private sector health expenditure is a major constraint. Accounting for more than 75 per cent of health expenditure by the private sector, this requires systematic sources of data for production of regular health accounts. As on date, estimation of expenditure by local bodies, firms, and NGOs is based upon some independent surveys. The last two health accounts provided some estimates based upon this. For strengthening the health accounts there should be appropriate mechanisms in place for production of private sector data on a regular basis. This article provides a systematic analysis of sources, estimation process and constraints in estimation of private sector health expenditure in India.