Effective Coverage: A Metric for Monitoring Universal Health Coverage

Marie Ng, Nancy Fullman, Joseph L Dieleman, Abraham D Flaxman, Christopher J L Murray and Stephen S Lim

PLOS Medicine, 2014, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-9

Abstract: : As part of the PLOS Collection on Universal Health Coverage, Stephen Lim and colleagues review the concept of effective coverage and discuss the ways in which current health information systems can support generating estimates of effective coverage. A major challenge in monitoring universal health coverage (UHC) is identifying an indicator that can adequately capture the multiple components underlying the UHC initiative. Effective coverage, which unites individual and intervention characteristics into a single metric, offers a direct and flexible means to measure health system performance at different levels. We view effective coverage as a relevant and actionable metric for tracking progress towards achieving UHC. In this paper, we review the concept of effective coverage and delineate the three components of the metric — need, use, and quality — using several examples. Further, we explain how the metric can be used for monitoring interventions at both local and global levels. We also discuss the ways that current health information systems can support generating estimates of effective coverage. We conclude by recognizing some of the challenges associated with producing estimates of effective coverage. Despite these challenges, effective coverage is a powerful metric that can provide a more nuanced understanding of whether, and how well, a health system is delivering services to its populations.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001730 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/fil ... 01730&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pmed00:1001730

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001730

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Medicine from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosmedicine ().