The World Health Organization developed a Primary Healthcare (PHC) definition for tracking and comparing PHC expenditures globally. However, if tracking PHC expenditure is supposed to inform national health policies (e.g., prioritize PHC in government budgets), the PHC definition should be tailored to the national context as key national stakeholders deem it appropriate. Tailoring PHC definition to the national context requires the development of a dynamic tool that allows countries to define PHC according to their specific needs and quantify related consumption of goods and services (within the framework of the System of Health Accounts (SHA) 2011 methodology). The tool is needed to assess how different PHC definitions affect the volume and structure of PHC spending in the WHO European region (by years, by sub-regions, or grouping of countries by geography, economic status, or EU membership).
WHO Regional Office for Europe contracted the CGC team to develop a tool for tracking the PHC spending in countries using the SHA 2011 methodology.
The dynamic modeling tool enables users to:
- Build PHC models per each version of PHC definition using SHA 2011 health function (HC & HCR) classification only or in combination with other classifications (such as healthcare providers (HP), capital expenditures (HK & HKR), or factors of provision (FP)).
- Group the countries of the WHO European regions using different categories (location, economic status, membership in supranational economic or political unions)
- Build scenarios by applying any PHC model (definition prepared through the first step) to all or selected countries in the WHO European region (or the country groups defined earlier) and computing PHC expenditures.
- Present (and export if needed) scenario results: basic (limited), advanced (wider), and comprehensive options.
The work contributed to the WHO publication “Tracking Primary healthcare spending in selected countries”.