PremiumNEW DELHI : Federal policy think tank NITI Aayog will on Monday release a ranking of states on the basis of overall performance and annual improvement in the health sector for the year 2019-20.
The health index, which aims to nudge states and union territories towards building strong health systems and improving service delivery, is also linked to the central government’s incentives to states under the national health mission.
This health index report has tried to shift the focus from budget spending, inputs, and outputs to outcomes, said an official statement. NITI Aayog believes ‘what gets measured gets done,’ said the statement.
The health index reports are brought out by the policy think tank, union health ministry and the World Bank.
The idea of the annual health index is to track progress on health outcomes and health systems’ performance, develop healthy competition and encourage cross-learning among states and union territories, the statement said.
Health index scores and rankings for states and union territories are generated to assess incremental performance (year-to-year progress) and overall performance (current performance). The exercise is expected to help drive efforts towards the achievement of health-related sustainable development goals including those related to universal health coverage, NITI Aayog said.
Health index is a weighted composite score using 24 indicators covering key aspects of health performance. The domains covered in the report include health outcomes, governance and information.
The health index is a useful tool to measure and compare the overall performance and incremental performance across states and union territories over time and is an important instrument in understanding the variations in performance across various parameters.
The health index has strengthened the culture of use of data at the state level to monitor performance and is contributing to the agenda of improving the availability, quality, and timeliness of data in most states, the statement said. Through this report, the annual performance of states and union territories gets monitored at the highest level of the government, said NITI Aayog.
