National and health accounts as a means and basis for monitoring and evaluation of health financing and expenditure – that was the topic of the workshop for employees of the Federal Development Programming Institute held on September 18.
An expert of the Public Health Reform Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina taught the employees of the Institute how to establish national health accounts and adapt them to European standards and experiences using examples of indicators of national health accounts in the health policy of the Republic of Slovenia. The goal of the workshop was understanding that information on health financing and consumption are an important contribution to health system monitoring and evaluation and that national health accounts are a requirement for health protection financing and consumption monitoring and evaluation.
Health accounts are an important tool for monitoring the effects/consequences of certain health reform measures over time, and mutually comparable indicators render possible a comparison with other countries and formulation of health policy goals at the national level. In this context, a very important issue is: why are health accounts important? They are important for international institutions for the purpose of monitoring health sector consumption at the global level, provision of information to donors based on which they decide on financial resources allocation, provision of data to international institutions and health economists in their efforts to research health sector consumption trends and best practices, and internationally comparable indicators also render possible a comparison of differences among health systems. Also, internationally comparable data on health sector consumption provide information in social security of inhabitants of a country and information on public finance stability and sustainability.
According to Eva Zver, the main goals of health policy and use of health sector expenditure indicators are: equality in availability, health system efficiency, financial sustainability, quality and successfulness of the financial system.