Using Resource Tracking and Management Framework for Health to Strengthen Health Financing Capacity: Experience from India

The following sections are included:There is a need for a paradigm shift from health resource tracking to a more comprehensive resource tracking and management framework that includes resource mobilization, resource allocation, resource utilization, resource productivity, and resource targeting alongside the health financing continuum.Even in a stable and strong political and economic environment, strategies for mobilizing additional resources are unlikely to yield the desired outcomes unless the public finance management system and health financing system are aligned. It will likely lead to underutilization and affect productivity.Health managers in the public sector find it challenging to translate evidence to policy action. Research in health financing should be followed up with technical assistance and mentoring support to governments for generating adequate buy-in of the resource tracking and management approach.National comprehensive database of all health budgets and expenditure across financing streams should be publicly available, powered by an IT platform that allows for data extraction in an electronic database form that is usable. This includes expenditure and audit reports of quasi-autonomous government bodies that implement health budgets.The resource tracking and management framework may need a set of indicators to monitor progress against different stages of the continuum of health financing.