Policy to improve performance requires information on the principal factors which explain
it. Knowledge of the determinants of health system performance, as distinct from understanding
of what determines health status, remains very limited. This report focuses on
a few universal functions which health systems perform, as indicated in Figure 2.1 above,
asking what it means for those functions to be discharged well or poorly and suggesting
how they are associated with differences in achievement among countries. This helps to
look at the health system overall, rather than building up from the component sub-systems,
organizations or programmes, as is more common in evaluations of performance
(18).
The service provision function is the most familiar, and in fact the entire health system is
often identified with just service delivery. The classification here emphasizes that providing
services is something the system does; it is not what the system is. Much of what is included
in the financing function occurs outside what is usually considered to be the health system,
as a process which happens to collect revenues and put them at the system’s disposal.
Treating fairness in financial contribution as one of the intrinsic goals of the system requires
viewing the function partly as another of the tasks that the system does, rather than pas- sively receiving money from somewhere else. It is the system which collects some of the
funds directly, pools all that are pooled except for general taxation, and purchases goods
and services. This means the system is at least partly accountable to society for how resources
are raised and combined, and not only for how they are ultimately used.
Every health system makes some investments in creating resources, but these also are
sometimes regarded as coming from outside the system itself. In the short run, the system
can only use the resources created in the past, and often can do little to change even how
they are employed. But in the long run, investment also is something the system does – and
precisely because investments are long-lived, it has a responsibility to invest wisely. Relating
achievements to total system expenditure may show that a system is performing badly
precisely because what can be obtained from today’s resources is needlessly limited by how
resources were invested yesterday and the day before.
The fourth function is called stewardship, because the concept is well described by the
dictionary definition: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s
care (19). People entrust both their bodies and their money to the health system, which has
a responsibility to protect the former and use the latter wisely and well. The government is
particularly called on to play the role of a steward, because it spends revenues that people
are required to pay through taxes and social insurance, and because it makes many of the
rules that are followed in private and voluntary transactions. It also owns facilities on trust
from the citizens. Private insurers and practitioners, however, perform this function in only
a slightly restricted degree, and part of the state’s task as the overall steward or trustee of
the system is to see to it that private organizations and actors also act carefully and responsibly.
A large part of stewardship consists of regulation, whether undertaken by the government
or by private bodies which regulate their members, often under general rules
determined by government. But the concept embraces more than just regulation, and when
properly conducted has a pervasive influence on all the workings of the system.
These functions are identifiable in widely differing health system structures (20, 1). At
one extreme is a system in which functions are substantially combined in a single organization
which raises, pools and allocates funds to a fairly monolithic group of service providers
who are its own employees. The Norwegian health system resembles this type of structure,
as did the British National Health Service prior to 1990. A system may instead have a high
degree of “vertical” segmentation. Separate organizations such as the ministry of health,
social security funds, the armed forces, charitable organizations, or private insurers may
pay their own providers, raise and allocate funds and provide services, for non-overlapping
populations. The health systems of much of Latin America bear some resemblance to this
model, although patients often get care from two or more of the vertically separate organizations.
A system could also have “horizontal” integration of each function – one organization
performing it – but a different organization for each function. No system quite
corresponds to this, because there is never a single bloc of providers, unless they are part of
a fully integrated system. However, some systems such as that of Chile separate collection
and pooling for a large share of resources, and employ a large number of providers under a
single organization. At the opposite extreme from a monolithic organization is a system
with separate institutions raising funds and paying providers under pluralistic provision
arrangements in which few providers “belong” to the financing institution. The Colombian
system, following the reforms introduced since 1993, looks somewhat like the latter.
Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 concentrate in turn on key characteristics of each of the four
functions – service delivery, investment, financing and stewardship – and on some factors affecting performance, examining patterns in countries at different income levels. The financing
function obviously is most important for the goal of fairness in paying for the
system, but how it is carried out also affects health outcomes and even has some effect on
responsiveness. The service delivery function is most tied to health outcomes, but also matters
greatly for responsiveness. And stewardship affects everything.