Performance-Based Incentives in Health Care: Evaluation of Argentina’s Plan Nacer

 

The results are in - uninsured pregnant women and children under six, who gained access to essential health services through Argentina’s Plan Nacer program, improved their health outcomes.

 

Since 2004, the Government of Argentina has run this innovative results-based financing program --Plan Nacer--aimed at providing basic health insurance to two million uninsured pregnant women and children, while creating incentives to provinces and health service providers to expand coverage of key services at a standard of quality. The program, supported in part by the World Bank, was accompanied by a rigorous impact evaluation that sought to establish whether results-based incentives made a difference for the utilization and quality of services, and for health status of beneficiary children and women.

 

The Center for Global Development (CGD) hosted this meeting where panelists from the government of Argentina, the impact evaluation team, and the World Bank shared key features of the program, the new results from the impact evaluation and discussed the program’s relevance in the context of efforts to experiment with result-based incentives to improve health and health services around the world.