A literature review of the disruptive effects of user fee exemption policies on health systems

If illness constitutes a major shock for households, the cost of healthcare is a second shock that strikes harshly and can drag them into poverty [1]. In Burkina Faso, 80% of poor households go into debt or sell assets to pay healthcare costs [2]. User fees in public services contribute to these catastrophic expenses [3], reduce health services utilization [4, 5] and are a major impediment to universal healthcare coverage [6, 7]. One solution being considered to improve access to care is to make services free at the point of service. Many countries, such as South Africa, Mali, Niger and Ghana, have therefore implemented exemption policies, sometimes targeted to population groups (e.g. children under the age of five years) or to specific services (e.g. caesareans).

Among the many articles published on this topic, two knowledge syntheses have been carried out. One presented the available scientific knowledge on the emergence, formulation, implementation and effects of exemption policies in five African countries and identified research needs [8]. The other was a systematic review aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of funding mechanisms to promote healthcare access for the poorest, including user fee exemptions [9]. Despite the poor quality of their research design, the authors concluded that the studies had shown that exemptions had a positive effect on health services utilization, but that they were not sufficiently effective to protect the poorest.

Even though these policies have produced an increase in the demand for services and therefore would appear very technically relevant, they raised a number of pragmatic concerns. In fact, these reforms have often been organized within unstable health systems that are not much used by the population and whose organizational deficiencies and dysfunctionalities are well known [10, 11]. While still subscribing to the principle of point-of-service fee exemption, decision-makers from 15 African countries reiterated these concerns at a meeting held at the end of 2010 [12].

A health system is a collection of services, persons and actions whose interactions are complex and interrelated. As has been affirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others before [13], for a health system to be effective and equitable, its different functions must work in unison, and any change will therefore have an effect on each function [14]. Thus, exemption can modify a health system’s equilibrium and disrupt its essential functions. The objective of this article is to identify the disruptions in health systems that are caused by these new public policies.

Our analysis was based on a survey of the scientific literature [15]. That survey took the form of a scoping study, an approach which summarizes all scientific knowledge on a specific topic, regardless of the type or quality of the studies’ designs. This summary is useful to better understand the nature of the scientific studies currently being done and to identify possible shortcomings. It differs from, and is often seen as a precursor to, systematic reviews that synthesize the most robust scientific data by using methods that limit biases and random errors [16]. We applied the systematization of the scoping study process proposed by Arskey and O’Malley [17]. Details of the documentary research strategy have been described elsewhere [15].

An article was retained if it: 1) dealt with a healthcare user fee exemption experience on a national scale (public policies); 2) reported original empirical data; 3) involved African countries; 4) mentioned pressures or disruptions in the health system; 5) was published in a peer-reviewed journal or monograph; 6) was published between 1988 and 2009 inclusively; and 7) was in French or English. The studies’ designs were reported using the classification system of the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool [18], an instrument used to describe the quality of studies, whatever their nature.

We examined the content of the articles to identify the elements that produced bottlenecks or pressures on the health system. WHO has defined a health system based on six essential functions (Table 1). We used this framework to analyze the content of the articles retained.

Understanding health systems as complex collections of components that interact in an effort to achieve their objectives offers an opportunity to see the effects of health policies through a new lens [42]. As has been explained by The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) [43], every system-wide intervention, such as user fee exemption policies, has an effect on the health system’s different components. This new literature review showed that, in responding to population needs that had up to then not been addressed, particularly because of an unfair funding model, the exemption policies generally created an increase in health services utilization. However, at the same time, this increase produced bottlenecks at different points in the system (Table 4) as was confirmed in a recent supplement of Health Policy and Planning on user fee removal in the health sector in low-income countries [44]. That being said, increased utilization was not the only source of pressure on the system. There was a constellation of variables that acted, at the same time, as both causes and consequences of the policies, particularly planning and attendant measures that often proved to be limited [8, 44]. There is a risk that, by disrupting the system’s functioning, these interventions will produce the opposite effect from what was intended, that is, a return to low utilization of services. However, given the recent nature of these policies, the timeframe adopted in this review, and the possibility of publication bias, which exposes problems (although often implicitly) more often than successes, we do not yet have enough distance or any evidence that these reverse effects—such as a return to low utilization—actually exist.

The AHPSR’s observation in 2009 is still relevant with respect to user fee exemption policies: “…systemic factors and their impacts have hardly been studied” [43]. The articles included in the present literature review were not aimed at understanding the systemic effect of these policies, but generally focused on a single function of the health system. Two-thirds of the articles addressed only one or two system functions. This perspective adopted by the authors also limits the lessons we can draw from national experiences to support decision-makers involved in developing and implementing such policies. Only a few of the authors attempted to put the results of their studies into perspective in the context of health systems [20, 27]. The major lesson to be drawn from this scoping study is thus the need for empirical studies aimed at understanding more clearly, on a nation-wide or district scale, how these policies affect, at one and the same time, all the functions of the health system. Now that the positive effects of user fee exemptions on utilization have largely been demonstrated, researchers need to direct their attention toward more systemic questions. This approach fits within the movement that promotes developing and implementing reforms while taking into account the different potential effects on health systems [45]. Addressing these more systemic questions, by looking particularly at implementation, will likely call for new forms of collaboration among researchers, political decision-makers and practitioners [46].

In doing this survey, it was not our intent to report all the available knowledge on these interventions or to discuss the methods used, as this has been done by others already. Our primary aim was to bring to light the elements related to exemption policies that were disruptive to the system and to highlight certain areas where there was a lack of knowledge. The main limitation of our study, aside from its being more narrative than explicative, is therefore that we have not highlighted the successes of these policies, except for the increase in service utilization. Moreover, the elements reported here are only potential disruptions and do not necessarily reflect what is actually happening across all systems as a whole. For this reason, we repeat our call for further empirical studies on this matter. Nevertheless, these disruptive elements may also be seen as demonstrations of what might occur if decision-makers, in trying to implement exemption policies, do not ensure the necessary conditions of preparation, planning and attendant measures from a systemic perspective, as is shown in the new empirical studies published in the recent supplement of Health Policy and Planning [44].

While user fee exemptions for health services have made it possible to address needs that until now had not been met, an analysis of the literature shows the other side of the coin. In fact, in acting on the provision of services to make them accessible to more people, the exemption policies have at the same time disrupted other essential functions of the health systems of the countries involved, which were already, in any case, relatively unstable. If this very relevant user fee exemption policy is to be effective and equitable, it is therefore essential that these interactions be taken into account when formulating exemption policies, in order to limit disruptions and to create the synergy needed for the system to perform optimally.