Concept of Transitions and Evolution of Health Care Systems: Implications for Assessing Performance

Abstract

Performance of health care systems is a subject of continuous concern for governments. The issues of concern are about fair and equitable provisioning of services allowing citizens to attain a state of well being. Inequalities in form of distribution of health outcome indicators continue to persist. Attempts at creating a framework for management of performance of health systems have had its own issues. We use the concept of transitions to identify some critical process factors which help in our understanding of performance of health systems. We suggest that for the components and stages of transitions determine the nature of disease burden, identifying an area of focus. More important is their ability to indicate the inherent skill and process strengths of the health system as it facilitates the transition process and manages it. Our proposition is that understanding how a health system is undergoing transitions and its current state allows us to forecast changes required in its functioning to improve performance.

Keywords: Transitions, Performance Health Systems