Guide to producing national health accounts : with special applications for low-income and middle-income countries

Annotation National health accounts are a powerful and practical tool for policy-makers interested in evaluating and restructuring their nation's health care financing and in developing and assessing financial interventions to improve people's health. This Guide to producing national health accounts, with special applications for low-income and middle-income countries, provides practical help in developing this socioeconomic information. Jointly sponsored by the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development, the Guide pulls together the experience and expertise of long-time practitioners in the field to help the reader lay out the framework for a set of accounts. It walks the reader through the process of acquiring and evaluating data and provides step-by-step examples of how to turn raw numbers into information useful for policy analysis and development. Be they first-time health accountants looking for guideance or experienced practitioners looking for a good reference manual, readers will find the Guide to be a welcome addition to their toolkit National Health Accounts (NHA) constitutes a systematic, comprehensive, and consistent monitoring of resource flows in a country's health system. They are a tool specifically designed to inform the health policy process, including policy design and implementation, policy dialogue, and the monitoring and evaluation of health care interventions. They provide the evidence to help policy-makers, nongovernmental stakeholders, and managers to make better decisions in their efforts to improve health system performance. This Guide takes advantage of extensive work on standards for health accounts undertaken for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Ten years of Endeavour by national experts in health accounts in OECD Member countries culminated in the publication in 2000 by OECD of A system of health accounts, a manual proposing a set of classifications and dimensions for use in health accounting. The standards embodied in the OECD System of Health Accounts (SHA) have been adopted by the European Union as the goals towards which Member states are to work, and many non-OECD countries have decided to use the SHA standards as the basis for their accounts as well. The framework laid out in the Guide is only an early step in the development of internationally comparable health accounts. For most countries, what is described here can be accomplished in the short term, albeit perhaps with considerable effort; for other countries, it represents a medium-term goal. No two countries have completely comparable health systems, and no two have completely comparable health accounts. This Guide is an important step on the path towards international agreement on standards and practices in depicting financial flows through a nation's health system and the effect of those flows on the health of the population Ch. 1. Introduction To National Health Accounts And This Guide -- Ch. 2. Getting Organized: Gathering The Resources To Prepare National Health Accounts, And Sketching The Health System -- Ch. 3. Defining And Categorizing Health Expenditure -- Ch. 4. Classifying Entities In The Health Care System -- Ch. 5. National Health Accounts Tables -- Ch. 6. Data And The National Health Accounts -- Ch. 7. A Guide To Non-survey Sources Of Data For National Health Accounts -- Ch. 8. Developing And Using Surveys In Health Accounts -- Ch. 9. Organizing The Estimation Process: Developing A Route Map And Establishing A List Of Financing Agents -- Ch. 10. Making A First Approximation Of Financing Agent Funds -- Ch. 11 Estimating The Financing Sources By Financing Agents Table -- Ch. 12. Estimating The Financing Agents By Providers Table -- Ch. 13. Developing The Tables For Financing Agents By Functions And Providers By Functions -- Ch. 14. Distributing Health Expenditure Among The Population -- Ch. 15. Concluding Thoughts -- References -- Annex A. Resources Available For Health Accountants -- Annex B. Definitions Of Categories In The International Classifications For Health Accounts And In Other Useful Classification Schemes -- Annex C. National Accounts, Input/output Tables, And Satellite Accounts -- Annex D. Data Techniques Often Used In Health Acounting. Errata Sheet Inserted. Includes Bibliographical References. 1.01.The goal of this Guide to producing national health accounts is to provide the conceptual and practical information needed to set up and implement national health accounts (NHA) in a country.