FinHealth: Public Financial Management in Health Toolkit

The ‘FinHealth: PFM in Health Diagnostic Toolkit’ (hereafter, ‘the Toolkit’)—as presented in the current document—aims to help country teams identify key challenges and opportunities associated with PFM arrangements in the health sector in client countries and programs. It also aims to propose possible ways to strengthen PFM arrangements for better planning and implementation of service delivery. The Toolkit employs a problem-driven approach to identify and analyze the PFM and health finance bottlenecks or enablers that constrain or support service delivery results at the provider level. These factors are then traced along the service delivery chain to identify the systemic root causes that contribute to outcomes at the service provider level. The Toolkit is intended to assist countries in understanding if and how PFM issues are relevant to service delivery in the health sector in the particular country’s context, and how to develop or customize possible solutions for the country. Considering the relative importance of the issues and challenges identified, as well as the possible practicality and sequencing of the solutions and/or interventions suggested, an action plan for the country could eventually be developed. Application of the Toolkit is aimed towards improving the efficiency of public spending in health to achieve better outcomes. Different analytical work will be required to assess whether the given budget for health is optimal in a given country context.