Many low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as Cambodia, have undertaken significant reforms in the last decade to strengthen their health care systems to improve equity and accelerate progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). In this context, health financing remains one of the main pillars of an equitable health care system and a decisive factor in its performance in terms of efficiency and quality. Knowledge of the costs of health care services is particularly relevant, as it can improve the management of health care facilities and strengthens strategic purchasing and the quality and efficiency of health services. It helps managers at health facilities and administrative entities to deliver optimal health care and enables social health protection schemes to set reimbursement rates and improve purchasing.
In addition to raising awareness of the costs of health services, community participation was identified as another tool to facilitate access to health services in the context of UHC. Social accountability whereby citizens hold providers and policymakers accountable is one popular approach, especially to enable poor people access to health care services. In this context, the idea of a Community-Managed Health Equity Fund (CMHEFs) in Cambodia describes an approach that focuses on community engagement to improve the utilization of poor people’s entitlement to user-free health care in public health facilities.
Both the development of social accountability to enable health care that is particularly targeted at poor population groups and the promising applications of cost accounting results to improve health services and health financing (particularly in the context of limited financial resources) are thus relevant factors on Cambodia’s path to UHC.
In this context, two research papers were recently published, which are available for download in the appendix. The research paper on „Costing for universal health coverage: insight into essential economic data from three provinces in Cambodia“ (published in 2019) reports on the results of the initial phase of the establishment of a routine health service costing system using a standard methodology in three provinces of Cambodia. It is accompanied by an analysis of three Health Equity Fund configurations in Cambodia: „Can social accountability improve access to free public health care for the poor? Analysis of three Health Equity Fund configurations in Cambodia, 2015–17“.
Furthermore, a new Supplement on Health Policy and Planning provides evidence on the equitable impact of health financing reforms in three countries in the Lower Mekong region of South East Asia – Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar. The four articles provide a basic overview of the status quo and current developments in terms of universal health coverage and financing policies. Click here to get free access to all four articles of the supplement.
