UHC service planning & models of care (2025)

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UHC service planning & models of care
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Today's health services are not fit for 21st century challenges. Approximately half the world's population lacks access to essential health care. Where health care is accessible, it is often fragmented and of poor quality. A fundamental shift in the way health services are organised and delivered is key to achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and universal health coverage (UHC).

Integrated people-centred health services

Integrated services are health services that are managed and delivered so that people receive a continuum of health promotion, disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, disease-management, rehabilitation and palliative care services, coordinated across the different levels and sites of care within and beyond the health sector, and according to their needs throughout the life course.

People-centred health services is an approach to care that consciously adopts the perspectives of individuals, families and communities, and sees them as participants as well as beneficiaries of trusted health systems that respond to their needs and preferences in humane and holistic ways.

People feel lost in the system, are uninformed and some do not seek care at all. People want to be seen and treated as a whole person. Integrated, people-centred health services means putting people and communities, not diseases, at the centre of health systems, and empowering people to take charge of their own health rather than being passive recipients of services. Integrated, people-centred health services fight health system fragmentation and foster greater coordination and collaboration with organizations and providers across care settings, to deliver health services that are better aligned with their needs.

Evidence shows that health systems oriented around the needs of people and communities are more effective, cost less, improve health literacy and people engagement, and are better prepared to respond to health crises.

PHC-oriented models of care at the core of integrated service delivery

Globally, many countries have embraced the goal of improving health systems and progressing towards UHC through a primary health care (PHC) approach. An important step in developing health systems based on PHC is to reorient national and subnational models of care. A model of care determines how services should be delivered, including the processes of care, the organization of providers and the management of services.

A PHC-oriented model of care prioritizes first-contact care and emphasizes longitudinal health care coordination for promotion and prevention across the life course and for conditions that require care over time. A PHC-oriented model of care creates pathways to guide people’s journeys through a health system. These models of care are centred on high-quality primary care and promote strong linkages with timely acute care and effective referral and counter-referral systems across all levels. These models share the following characteristics: 

high-quality primary care as first-contact care, often for undifferentiated symptoms or conditions;  
strong linkages with timely acute care (including for out-of-hours first contact services) and effective referral and counter-referral systems across all levels of care;  
longitudinal health care coordination for promotion and prevention across the life course and for conditions that require care over time;  
multidisciplinary, team-based service delivery; and  
pathways to guide people’s journeys through a health system.

Explicit definition of a UHC package is a key aspect of a PHC-oriented model of care. When well-designed, a service package partially determines other elements of a model of care, for example, through linkage of services to platforms and creating coherent linkages among services across platforms. A well-designed UHC package facilitates the goals that a country has for service delivery and drives integration and linkage across platforms, in so doing supporting the design and implementation of effective models of care.

There is no single correct ‘PHC-oriented' model of care but they need to be adapted to the local context and can be implemented with a focused and staged approach. Further, a model of care is never the end in itself, but rather a means of delivering integrated, equitable and responsive care to people who need it.

Making progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC): the importance of service planning and package implementation

As part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all countries have committed to making progress towards UHC. The Service Planning, Delivery & Implementation ( SPDI) Platform supports countries in developing comprehensive national health service packages.

A global commitment: All countries have set an SDG target (3.8) to advance towards UHC, and health service packages are an important mechanism to hitting SDG targets.
The power of packages:Countries utilize packages for many purposes:

Defining benefits
Ensuring contracting accountability
Planning services, including defining health worker competencies and product requirements
Program reporting
Reorienting models of care

Implementation is key:Packages have impact only through effective implementation. The developmentandexecution of a well-designed national package supports progress towards UHC.

The SPDI Platform enables countries to understand current service delivery, rapidly create context-relevant packages, and adapt services swiftly to respond to emergencies.

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High-priority Health services for Humanitarian response (H3 package)

To address the growing burden of humanitarian crises and ensure quality service delivery for affected populations, WHO and the Global Health Cluster developed the Package of High Priority Health Services for Humanitarian Response (H3 Package). The reference package incorporates the principles of universal health coverage (UHC) to a humanitarian context to define a set of prioritized health interventions that could feasibly be delivered to populations affected by humanitarian crises during protracted emergencies. The H3 Package was developed to promote accountability of humanitarian partners to affected populations and identify opportunities to facilitate an operational entry point for the humanitarian-development nexus. The H3 Package provides a reference for services that could be delivered as part of a humanitarian response, and services can be integrated across delivery platforms from the community to outpatient to first level hospitals. The package is designed to be implemented using existing humanitarian kits for medicines and supplies - without requiring additional substantive education of the heath workforce.

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