Abstract
National health systems performance (HSP) assessments and benchmarking are critical to understanding how well the delivery of healthcare meets the needs of citizens. Benchmarking HSP has often been done between countries to inform the global public health space. However, its impact is likely to be far greater when implemented sub-nationally to inform actual decisions on resource allocations and performance improvements, especially in high disease burden, low-income countries, where the resource envelope available for health is inadequate. In their study, Roberts and colleagues assemble, analyse and map a minimum set of health intervention and outcome indicators from 1990–2011 to assess and benchmark HSP across the 11 regions of Uganda. This is the first empirical sub-national HSP benchmarking study in the country and the results have potentially important health system policy implications.Please see related research: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/13/285
Highlights
Assessing and benchmarking health systems performance (HSP) is complex and often requires the inclusion of many indicators to develop a composite metric of performance [1]
The paradoxical ‘advantage’ of such a context with regard to benchmarking of HSP, is that African health systems focus on the delivery of a basic package of interventions [3], which could be monitored through an basic set of indicators
It is within this context that Roberts et al [6] undertook their important study assessing the trends in child mortality and 20 maternal and health indicators related to child survival [7], computing the national and regional trends in all the indicators, and selecting a subset of 11 to benchmark the performance of the health system in each of 11 regions
Summary
Assessing and benchmarking health systems performance (HSP) is complex and often requires the inclusion of many indicators to develop a composite metric of performance [1]. Background Assessing and benchmarking health systems performance (HSP) is complex and often requires the inclusion of many indicators to develop a composite metric of performance [1]. Correspondence: anoor@kemri-wellcome.org 1Nairobi Programme, Kenya Medical Research Institute/Wellcome Trust Research Programme, PO Box 43640-00100, Nairobi, Kenya 2Information for Malaria (INFORM) Projecthttp://www.inform-malaria.org Full list of author information is available at the end of the article population coverage and outcomes form the basis for HSP assessment and benchmarking.
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