Introduction
A movement towards universal health coverage (UHC)—ensuring that everyone who needs health services is able to get them, without undue financial hardship—has been growing across the globe [1]. Close to half of the countries of the world—across all income levels—are currently engaged in health reforms that aim to extend, deepen, or otherwise improve coverage with needed health services and/or financial protection. These reforms have led to a sharp increase in the demand for expertise, evidence, and measures of progress and also a push to make UHC one of the goals of the post-2015 development agenda [2].
UHC has been defined as the desired outcome of health system performance, whereby all people who need health services (promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation) receive them, without undue financial hardship [1]. UHC has two interrelated components: the full spectrum of good-quality, essential health services according to need and protection from financial hardship, including possible impoverishment due to out-of-pocket payments for health services. Both components should benefit the entire population. In the context of this framework, “essential” is used to describe the services that a country decides should be available immediately to all people who need them. The contents of the services vary by setting.
The dimensions have commonly been depicted as a cube, shown in Figure 1 (adapted from [3],[4]). The first axis represents the population, the people who need health services. The services axis depicts the quality health services they need. The vertical axis is the proportion of the total cost of providing services to the population that is financed through “pooled financing systems” as opposed to direct payments by patients, shown in Figure 1 as the box labelled “current pooled funds.”
In this illustration, a little more than a half the population is covered for about half of the possible services they need, but only half the cost of these services is met from pooled funds. There is thus a shortfall of service coverage among those who receive services, inequity in service coverage (a large fraction of the population receives no services), and a lack of financial protection (those who receive services pay a large part out-of-pocket and hence risk financial hardship). To get closer to UHC, the country would need to provide services to the people who currently need them but don't receive any, provide more services to those who currently receive some but not the full range of services they need, and raise the fraction of health spending financed through pooled funds to improve financial protection. At the same time, health services need to be of sufficient quality to achieve the desired outcomes, so improving quality will be a priority in many settings.
Each country progresses in filling the different dimensions of the box (Figure 1) according to its preferences and constraints, trading off what services are provided, who gets them, and how much they are financed out of pooled funds. As such, UHC is the ultimate objective or goal, with countries starting from different places, with very different health problems, health systems, and resources. They need to find their own paths.
UHC is a dynamic, rather than static, concept. New health technologies and medical products are developed continually, as are new ways of improving the quality of care. The health service axis in Figure 1, therefore, expands over time. Many of the innovations come at higher costs, while population demands for new and better technologies also increase, putting upward pressure on pooled resources and making it harder to hold constant—let alone raise—the share of spending financed through pooled resources. That is why the search to attain and maintain UHC concerns even the richest countries, particularly at times of financial crises, when their ability to maintain high standards of service coverage and low household out-of-pocket payments is put under considerable strain.
This PLOS Collection focuses on the monitoring of progress towards UHC, which should be a central component of any UHC strategy. Country case studies and technical reviews were conducted as part of the development of a global monitoring framework by World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank Group. The country case studies [5]–[17] aimed to document what indicators, measurement, and communication approaches work best to monitor progress towards UHC. The technical review papers addressed issues related to the measurement of financial protection [18], service coverage [19], effective coverage [20], equity and UHC [21], and as an example of a health program, the implications for tuberculosis program monitoring [22].
The second version of the WHO/World Bank Group UHC monitoring framework was published in May 2014 [23]. In addition to the country case studies and technical reviews, the framework was based on consultations and discussions with country representatives, technical experts, and global health and development partners [24]. The feedback and country case studies were synthesized and reviewed at a meeting of country and global experts in Bellagio, Italy, in March 2014 [25]. The framework was modified to reflect the views emerging from these consultations and lessons learned from the country case studies.
The UHC monitoring framework aims to inform and guide assessment of both aggregate and equitable coverage of essential health services as well as financial protection. Monitoring progress towards these two components of UHC will be complementary and critical to achieving desirable health outcome goals, such as ending preventable deaths and promoting longer healthy life expectancy, and also reducing poverty and protecting household incomes. The main characteristics of the monitoring framework are described in Box 1. The global goal and proposed targets and indicators are presented in Box 2.