Make Health Products Affordable for All
For too many people around the world, medicines are too expensive, which limits access to high-quality healthcare.
Maisha Meds explains that by partnering with pharmacies to better help them manage their inventory and subsidize medications for patients, the United Nations Sustainable Goals (SDG) 3 of achieving good health and well-being becomes more possible. Maisha Meds proposes creating a pay-for-health outcomes fund – modeled after successful programs like Medicare – to increase healthcare access and affordability for all.
We spoke with Maisha Meds, whose moonshot proposal would contribute to Sustainable Development Goal 3: good health and well-being for all.
“We hope to make the provision of healthcare more accessible and transparent through the establishment of a health-outcomes fund that ensures patients at the last mile have access to quality healthcare.”
~ Maisha Meds
UA: What Sustainable Development Goal are you championing?
MM: SDG #3 Good Health & Well Being. In many parts of Africa, uninsured patients pay out of pocket for their medications, which often leads them to prioritize price over quality when making treatment decisions. This causes them to make price-sensitive decisions like choosing inefficacious medicines, not taking the full course of medication, or forgoing testing decisions which can lead to worse outcomes in the long run, such as medication resistance or progression of the illness.
Therefore, harnessing the private sector for patients in an affordable manner for them is crucial for expanding access to primary care services across Africa.
UA: What inspired your moonshot idea?
MM: We propose the development of an outcomes fund that operates like "Medicare" for primary health care in low-and middle-income countries to support roughly 125 million patients annually across ten countries in the region to support diseases such as malaria, HIV prevention, family planning, chronic diseases, malnutrition prevention, safe water, tuberculosis, and vaccinations.
By building systems that enable private sector providers to be paid for the services they provide regularly, we anticipate this will lead to an overall increase in healthcare access. These providers are often a preferred point of access for basic primary care, given they are more proximate, convenient, and discreet, but financial barriers prevent these access points from being fully leveraged by many patients as part of a holistic system approach.
In order to develop the outcomes fund, key policy customers, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and national governments would need to develop funding mechanisms for results-based financing health contracts that specifically target the private sector. The Health Finance Coalition and others would develop a rate card where primary healthcare providers are reimbursed for services that they provide to patients. We anticipate that this approach will lead to a 50% cost savings over existing models.
UA: What impact do you hope to make?
BG: Maisha Meds have developed a digital reimbursement and sales platform that delivers targeted subsidies for essential health products for patients and providers to influence behavior at the point of care.
It can potentially optimize patient care more widely at the last mile using our data-driven approach, payments architecture, and supply chain capabilities to ensure appropriate, quality treatments are available and dispensed to patients.
We hope to leverage our digital reimbursement platform to make the provision of healthcare more accessible and transparent through the establishment of a health-outcomes fund that ensures patients at the last mile have access to quality healthcare.
UA: Looking ahead to 2023, what are you hopeful about?
MM: We are hopeful that there will be more global health funders that are interested in a pay-for-results approach. The launch Outcomes Fund for Fevers (OFF) in partnership with the Global Fund, a new performance-based financing initiative aimed at scaling fever testing, treatment, and digital reporting through the private sector in sub-Saharan Africa earlier this year are all promising indications that there is a shift starting towards pay-for-results financing.
Link to full step-by-step moonshot policy proposal coming soon.