Universal health coverage under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action's sanctions: strategic purchasing approach in the Iranian health system

The Use of Evidence-Informed Deliberative Processes for Health Insurance Benefit Package Revision in Iran

BACKGROUND

Iran considers the revision of its health insurance benefit package (HIBP) as a means to achieve universal health coverage (UHC). Yet, its decision-making process has been criticised for being weak in terms of accountability and transparency. This paper reports on the development and implementation of the HIBP revision in Iran in the period 2019-2021, employing evidence-informed deliberative processes (EDPs), a framework for benefit package design with the explicit aim of optimising the legitimacy of decision-making.

METHODS

The High Council for Health Insurance (HCHI) is coordinating the HIBP revision: it planned the six steps of the EDP framework with support from World Health Organization (WHO) and Radboudumc in 2019, and conducted a pilot project on multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis and treatment in 2020.

RESULTS

Implementation of the MS pilot project concerned the installation of advisory committees (involving some 60 stakeholders in supportive task forces, a technical working group [TWG] and a national advisory committee [NAC]), the selection of decision criteria (relating to quality of care, necessity, and sustainability), the inclusion of services for evaluation (nine in total), and the assessment and appraisal of these services.

CONCLUSION

Implementation of the priority setting process for MS diagnosis and treatment services has likely improved the legitimacy of decision-making by involving stakeholders who engaged in deliberation based on available evidence in a stepwise, transparent process. It is expected to improve the quality of care for MS patients as well as its financial accessibility, at a zero net budget impact. The pilot project has served to help Iran's health system move faster toward UHC for a broader range of essential health services.

The Violence of Non-Violence: A Systematic Mixed-Studies Review on the Health Effects of Sanctions

The use of sanctions as a policy tool to affect change in the political behavior of target states has increased over the past 30 years, along with a concern about their impact on civilian health. Some researchers have proposed that targeting sanctions can avoid their moral costs, yet others have challenged this claim. This systematic mixed-studies review explored the debate about targeted sanctions by appraising their health effects as reported in the medical and public health literature, with a global focus and through the COVID-19 era.We searched three electronic databases without temporal or geographical restrictions and identified 50 studies spanning three decades (1992-2021) meeting our inclusion criteria. Using a piloted form, we extracted quotations addressing our research questions and identified themes that we grouped according to the effects of sanctions on health or its determinants, generating frequency distributions to assess the strength of support for each theme. While no study posited a causal relationship between sanctions and health, or engaged the morality of sanctions, most implied that when sanctions were present, health was inevitably impacted, even for sanctions ostensibly targeted to minimize civilian harm. Our findings suggest that given the integrated nature of the global economy, it is all but impossible to design sanctions that will achieve their stated goals without inflicting significant harm on civilians. We conclude that the use of sanctions as a policy tool threatens global health and human rights, especially in times of crises.

The influential factors for achieving universal health coverage in Iran: a multimethod study

BACKGROUND

The initial purpose of healthcare systems around the world is to promote and maintain the health of the population. Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is a new approach by which a healthcare system can reach its goals. World Health Organization (WHO) emphasized maximum population coverage, health service coverage, and financial protection, as three dimensions of UHC. In progress for achieving UHC, recognizing the influential factors allows us to accelerate such progress. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the influential factors to achieve UHC in Iran.

METHODS

This is a multi-method study was conducted in four phases: First, a systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify the factors in PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Scopus, ProQuest, Cochrane library, and Science Direct databases, and hand searching google scholar search engine. For recognizing the unmentioned factors, a qualitative study consisting of one session of Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and five semi-structured interviews with experts was designed. The extracted factors were merged and categorized by round table discussion. Finally, the pre-categorized factors were refined and re-categorized under the health system's control knobs framework during three expert panel sessions.

RESULTS

Finally, 33 studies were included. Eight hundred two factors were extracted through systematic review and 96 factors through FGD and interviews (totally, 898). After refining them by the experts' panel, 105 factors were categorized within the control knob framework (financing 19, payment system7, Organization 23, regulation and supervision 33, Behavior 11, and Others 12). The majority of the identified factors were related to the "regulation and supervision" dimension, whilst the "payment system" entailed the fewest. The political commitment during political turmoil, excessive attention to the treatment, referral system, paying out of pocket(OOP) and protection against high costs, economic growth, sanctions, conflict of interests, weakness of the information system, prioritization of services, health system fragmented, lack of managerial support and lack of standard benefits packages were identified as the leading factors on the way to UHC.

CONCLUSION

Considering the distinctive role of the context in policymaking, the identification of the factors affecting UHC accompanying by the countries' experiences about UHC, can boost our speed toward it. Moreover, adopting a long-term plan toward UHC based on these factors and the robust implementation of it pave the way for Iran to achieve better outcomes comparing to their efforts.