Web-economic-crisis-health-systems-and-health-web

Preface
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Because it was not always clear whether a policy was a response to the crisis,
as opposed to being part of an ongoing reform process, we asked survey
respondents to divide policies into two groups based on whether they were
defined by the relevant authorities in the country as (a) a response to the crisis
or (b) either partially a response to the crisis (planned before the crisis but
implemented with greater or less speed or intensity than planned) or possibly
a response to the crisis (planned and implemented following the start of the
crisis but not defined by the relevant authorities as a response to the crisis). We
report both types of policy. In the country profiles, policies that were partially
or possibly a response to the crisis are presented in italics.
The study’s approach faced a number of largely unavoidable challenges, including
difficulties in attributing health policies to the crisis; difficulties in measuring
the impact of the crisis on health systems and health due to the absence of
national analysis and evaluation, time lags in international data availability and
time lags in effects; difficulties in disentangling the impact of the crisis itself
from the impact of health system responses to the crisis; and difficulties in
systematically providing information on each health system’s readiness to face a
crisis. For example, some countries may have introduced measures to improve
efficiency or control health spending before the crisis began, limiting the scope
for further reform. It was possible to address this last challenge in the case
studies, but not in the country profiles.
Both books in this study are part of a wider initiative to monitor the effects of
the crisis on health systems and health, to identify those policies most likely
to sustain the performance of health systems facing fiscal pressure and to gain
insight into the political economy of implementing reforms in a crisis.