output-based healthcare

Anna Gorter is giving a talk next Thursday at the University of Bristol about vouchers in health. The synopsis follows here:

Competitive voucher schemes are one of many demand-side financing approaches to health care, which links public funding to delivery of basic health services. The schemes have the potential to target specific segments of the population effectively and provide them with priority services such as treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STI), HIV-AIDS services, family planning, safe motherhood and gender violence recovery services. When a voucher scheme is built on the principle of competition, it may not only further empower clients by allowing them to bring their business to the provider of their choice (be it public, private-non-profit or private-for-profit) but also give incentives for service providers to be innovative, cost effective, and responsive to the clients. Vouchers also encourage the use of specific health services because they provide information about the existence of the services and guide potential users to where these can be obtained, contributing to the potential ability of vouchers to reach underserved and/or vulnerable population groups.

In this talk we will introduce competitive voucher schemes as a demand side financing approach, describe their strengths and when, where and how these schemes work best. We will present the short history of competitive voucher schemes in the health field and illustrate this with relevant experiences from Nicaragua, Asia and Africa: a Nicaraguan scheme providing STI and HIV-AIDS services to sex workers, their clients, and glue-sniffing youth; schemes in Uganda and Kenya providing sexual and reproductive health services to disadvantaged populations; schemes providing safe motherhood services to the poor in Cambodia, India and Bangladesh; and other programmes. We will conclude with a discussion on the relevance of competitive voucher programmes in improving the provision of health care to underserved and/or vulnerable population groups.