The Strategic Purchasing for Primary Health Care (SP4PHC) project aims to improve how governments purchase primary health care services with a focus on family planning and maternal, newborn and child health. SP4PHC is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by ThinkWell. The six SP4PHC countries – Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Uganda – like many countries around the world, are trying to figure out how best to engage and pay healthcare providers in order to improve access to high quality primary health care services while containing costs. Our country-based teams are working with public purchasers – national health ministries, sub-national health departments, and health insurers – to make more deliberate decisions about what services to cover, which providers to contract, and the payment methods and rates to use, with the goal of improving health outcomes. For more information, view the SP4PHC overview presentation and one-pager.
What is Strategic Purchasing?
As countries implement strategies to achieve universal health coverage, they are undertaking health financing reforms to mobilize more financing for health and ensure that available funds for health are used optimally and equitably. Strategic purchasing is linked to the second objective. Purchasing refers to how institutions controlling pooled funds – like ministries of health and health insurance agencies – allocate them to healthcare providers. Making purchasing strategic involves basing purchasing decisions on information about provider behavior and population health needs in order to improve health system performance in terms of equitable access, quality of care, and financial protection. Read more in our Introduction to Strategic Purchasing one pager (also available in French).
SP4PHC Country Programs
The strategies we are implementing to improve purchasing are tailored to the local context in each country, but our approach is built on some shared principles. First, we have country-based teams in each of the five geographies and they are at the forefront of implementing the country strategies. Second, we work with the public purchaser and other relevant government institutions in each of the countries to facilitate policy dialogue on strategic purchasing reforms. Third, our work is grounded in analytics, which we use to diagnose existing challenges, design potential solutions, and test the suitability of those designs through pilot studies. Explore our country pages to learn more.
SP4PHC Learning Agenda
A priority of SP4PHC is to learn how primary health care is impacted by broader purchasing reforms, how purchasers can improve access to priority health services and influence quality of care, and how strategic purchasing can enable countries to achieve more with their health dollars. Through discussion and collaboration with a range of stakeholders, we developed a learning agenda that is framed around five key themes: prioritizing primary health care, purchaser and provider engagement, access and equity, quality, and efficiency. Within each thematic area, we conduct country-specific learning activities in partnership with local research institutions to document current practices and study the results from policy reform initiatives. We also conduct global reviews that combine the project countries’ experiences with broader global experience to draw insights and offer policy recommendations. We share our emerging insights in a quarterly newsletter with the hope that you can use our experience to inform your work.
For more information on our latest learning products, click here. We also encourage you to click through the five SP4PHC countries at the top of the page for country-specific information and sign up for our newsletter below.
Contact Us
We want to hear from you! Please reach out to us at SP4PHC@thinkwell.global to share your comments, suggestions, and ideas.
Related resources
SP4PHC aims to improve how governments purchase primary health care services, with a focus on family planning and maternal, newborn, and child health. SP4PHC is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.