Theorizing about Performance Evaluation of Health Systems from the Perspective of Civil Society

Abstract

One of the slogans that compose managerialism is the participation of civil society in controlling the performance of public administration, thus consolidating itself as a form of accountability. So this article is concerned with theorizing the role of civil society interested in the debate about the performance evaluation of health systems and the limits that the literature presents on this topic. An exploratory, descriptive-reflective, essay was carried out. The scientific literature on the subject presents three controversies on this subject: the first deals with the use of results measurement to evaluate performance in health systems, the second about the health system as an object of performance evaluation and the third deals with evaluation performance as a public policy in health systems, in which we brought the reflection on the case of the Unified Health System and the control of the performance of health policies by civil society. The theoretical reflection brought a wide open view to the complex relationship between society and State, their economic and political implications with performance and the limits of adopting these tools to measure. Finally, we conclude that three dimension of limits were identified (economic, political and technical) in this discussion that we need to overcome. Concerning this fact, we propose an essential research agenda.