A tool for assessing Health Financing Institutions and Organizations,
to support progress to UHC

Presenter

Inke Mathauer
Health Systems Development Specialist
Health Financing Policy, WHO

Chair

John C. Langenbrunner
Lead Economist, HDNHE

Synopsis

A health financing system review is an important process to assess a country's current health financing performance and the way in which the three health financing functions of collection of funds, pooling and purchasing work. The WHO Department of Health Systems Financing has developed an approach that can help guide such a systematic health financing system review. Such a detailed understanding provides the basis to explore and propose adequate health financing policy options and institutional and/or organizational changes within the health financing system in order to enhance health financing performance and ultimately to move (more rapidly) towards universal coverage or maintain it in the long run.

The approach is called OASIS - Institutional and Organizational ASsessment for Improving and Strengthening Health Financing. This approach is complementary to the 2010 World Health Report's key messages by providing practical guidance of how to diagnose problems in a country's existing health financing system as a basis for identifying appropriate country policy options and actions for reaching universal coverage. The distinctive characteristic of this approach is its focus on institutional design and organizational practice of health financing, on which health financing performance is dependent. Health financing and the move towards universal coverage can be enhanced by actively shaping the institutional design of the health financing system and by improving its organizational practice.

About the Speaker

Inke Mathauer is a health systems development specialist, holding a MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics. She is working in the Department of Health Systems Financing of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. Her work focuses on health financing system reviews, country-level health financing policy advice and conceptual work on health financing performance and the role of institutional design and organizational practice in health financing in low- and middle-income countries. Her current interest lies particularly in the institutional design of government subsidization programs for vulnerable groups in health insurance type schemes. She publishes on a range of health systems and health financing related aspects.

Prior to WHO, she worked for over 5 years for the German International Cooperation (GIZ, previously GTZ) at Headquarters in health systems development. In Kenya, she headed the quality management as well as health financing project activities of the GIZ supported health sector program and provided policy and technical advice to the Ministry of Health and the National Hospital Insurance Fund. Inke Mathauer has also undertaken several institutional analysis consultancies for the World Bank in the field of health and social protection. Earlier, she worked in Benin and Uganda.