Table 4 PBF definitions contained in reference documents and corresponding language categories
Source | Definition | Main keywords and their language categories | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The World Bank’s Performance-based financing Toolkit (2013) [24] | “PBF targets health facilities with a fee-for-service (conditional on quality) payment mechanism. […] PBF involves contracts with individual health facilities, whether public or private […]. PBF is done through a ‘contracting-in’ approach: PBF is put onto existing public and private health systems with a significant involvement of nonstarter actors”. | Economic sciences language | Management sciences language | Clinical language | Social sciences & humanities language |
*Conditionality (incentive theory) | *Quality of care | *Health systems reform | |||
*Contract (contract theory) | |||||
SinaHealth coursebook (2017) [25] | “Performance-based financing is a systems reform approach, which offers an answer to the 'how' of achieving Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals 2015-2030. Unlike other financing mechanisms, PBF proposes a hierarchy whereby the delivery of quality services comes first, followed by the efficient use of scarce public resources and only then equity and financial access”. | *Service delivery | *Quality of care | *Systems reform | |
*Efficiency | *Equity and financial access | ||||
*Financing mechanism | |||||
PBF Handbook by Management Sciences for Health (MSH) and USAID (2011) [26] | “PBF is the transfer of money or material goods from a funder or other supporter to a recipient, conditional on the recipient taking a measurable action or achieving a predetermined performance target. […] PBF shifts most financial risk from the funder to the recipient: payment (or sometimes the ‘performance incentive’ portion of the payment) is received when—or withheld until—results or actions are verified by the funder. […] [T]he funder links incentives to the recipient’s achievement of predetermined results. Recipients include institutions and/or individuals; in a health program, supply-side recipients might be service-providing institutions (clinic, hospital) and/or health care providers at any level”. | *Conditionality (incentive theory) | |||
*Money transfer | |||||
*Incentives | |||||
*Service delivery | |||||
*Measurable action/target | |||||
Royal Institute of Tropical Medicine (KIT) booklet (2011) [27] | “We use ‘performance’ in terms of productivity (number of outputs, rather than attaining targets or coverage of certain priority programmes) and of quality of care as perceived by the patient as well as by professionals. […] RBF, PBF, P4P or ‘achat de performance’ all aim at motivating healthcare workers to perform better. To achieve this, one can stimulate both their intrinsic motivators […], as well as their extrinsic motivators such as financial incentives”. | *Production of healthcare | *Outputs | *Quality of care | |
*Incentives | |||||
*Motivation | |||||
Cordaid position paper (2015) [23] | “Results Based Financing [RBF] is a system strengthening approach that introduces checks and balances along the service delivery chain, encouraging better governance, transparence and enhanced accountability. It achieves this by linking payments directly to performance. Contrary to traditional input funding, service providers […] receive their payment on the basis of agreed indicators and verified output. […] They are autonomous in how they spend the funds in order to achieve their own aims […]. RBF motivates service providers to deliver more services of higher quality and promotes entrepreneurship”. | *Conditionality (incentive theory) | *Governance, transparence and accountability | *Quality of care | *System strengthening approach |
*Measurable action/target | |||||
*Autonomy | |||||
*Entrepreneur-ship | |||||
*Verification of outputs (output evaluation) | |||||
*Motivation | |||||
*Service delivery | |||||