Making Performance-Based Funding Work for Health

Abstract

Performance-based funding provides powerful incentives to scale up the fight against HIV, TB, and malaria, argues a team of authors from the Global Fund.

Global Fund-supported programmes' contribution to international targets and the Millennium Development Goals: an initial analysis

“…Experience has shown that performance of programmes, particularly malaria programmes, tends to lag in the first 18 months of rapid scale up due to procurement bottlenecks or limited management capacities, but once such obstructive factors are alleviated, performance can quickly catch up towards targets. 13,29 Studies have found that absorptive capacity of countries with limited resources seems less restrictive than predicted, 30 and we also see no sign yet of limits to absorptive capacity. To achieve and maintain the future international targets for TB and malaria, additional funding will be required to re-treat bed nets with insecticides and replace wornout bed-nets, and to considerably accelerate TB control programme scale-up.…”

Implementing voluntary medical male circumcision using an innovative, integrated, health systems approach: experiences from 21 districts in Zimbabwe

“…The national VMMC program adopted a $25 per VMMC performance-based financing (PBF) system [30] to offset costs, promote health system strengthening, and improve performance [47,48]. The provision of PBF, an incentive for productivity, provides valuable discretionary income for the district, facility, and staff while simultaneously requiring sites to build strong fiscal management skills and infrastructure (Table 2).…”

Saving Lives in Health: Global Estimates and Country Measurement

“…Our methodology uses documented data reported to the Global Fund on the individuals receiving these services. These results are first verified by national disease programs (we invest 5%–10% of our funds to build the capacity of country monitoring and evaluation systems), then by the Global Fund (which uses independent local fund agents to check the national data systems measuring these services every six months), and finally by on-site checks in a sample of health facilities to verify that people receive these services (as part of performance-based funding) [8].…”