Assessing public health sector performance in Bangladesh: Implications for health systems strengthening and universal health coverage – A secondary data analysis

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has established a health systems strengthening initiative for measuring the performance of public sector health facilities in Bangladesh. The objective of the performance management initiative is to establish routine systems for measuring and scoring health facility performance and promote best practices in public health service management. The performance initiative includes a set of assessments conducted across the four tiers of the public health sector. The findings of assessments demonstrate improvements in the quality of health services and a sharp increase in the utilisation of services across all tiers during the period 2017–2019. The performance management initiative has also identified areas for improvement in the supply‐side health system readiness, including ensuring an adequate supply of human resources, essential medicines, and functioning medical equipment and technologies. This initiative outlines the need to systematically address the issue of high health workforce vacancy rates through effective human resource planning and management strategies. The reporting of these ongoing health systems successes and challenges through the performance management initiative in Bangladesh provides an opportunity to develop evidence‐based policy reforms for strengthening supply‐side health systems. The initiative results, particularly in the context of growing public demand for services, also justifies a monitoring and evaluation mechanism focusing on the quality and coverage of frontline health facilities and the development of more integrated health systems. The performance management initiative will facilitate the maintenance of essential health services while addressing emergency health needs and tracking progress towards achieving the Universal Health Coverage goal.