Health Care Financing deals with the generation, allocation and use of financial resources in the health system. Globally, it has become increasingly recognized as an area of major policy relevance to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Understanding the country's healthcare financing system allows to recognize current finances available for health and ways to raise more funds, allocating them in way to insure equity and quality healthcare for everyone. It also helps to understand mechanisms to efficiently and equitably allocate, purchase and spend finances to improve access to health services and reduce out of pocket expenditures that lead to catastrophe and impoverishment.
Further, the National Health Policy 2017 gives impetus to increasing government finances to health, better utilization of existing resources to achieve better health outcomes, improving financial protection and strategically purchasing from the not for profit and private sector. It also emphasized the establishment and institutionalization of a robust Health Accounts system to guide the policymakers in proper allocation of funds
Under this realm, the Health Care Financing (HCF) Division enables evidence-based policymaking and provide support to the Union and State governments in the area of healthcare financing. This division under NHSRC is the National Health Accounts Technical Secretariat (NHATS) with a mandate to institutionalize Health Accounts in India. The division has been producing National Health Account for the country since 2013-14 based on SHA-2011 guidelines which make the estimates from India comparable with the rest of the world. The NHA estimates for India is also used by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its Global Health Expenditure Database (GHED). The estimates are also used in important government documents such as the Economic Survey published by the Ministry of Finance and Survey of State Finances published by Reserve Bank of India. HCF division is also involved in reporting and monitoring health financing indicators as stated in the National Health Policy 2017, Sustainable Development Goals and Universal Health Coverage. HCF team also takes research studies in issues related to health financing in the country.