Scoping literature review on the basic health benefit package and its determinant criteria

There are various criteria and methods to develop Basic Health Benefit Package (BHBP) in world health systems. The present study aimed to extract criteria used in health systems in different countries around the world using scoping review method.

A systematic search was carried out in Cochrane Library, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science, ProQuest, World Bank, World Health Organization, and Google databases between January and April 2016. Papers and reports were gathered according to selected keywords and were examined by two authors. Finally, the criteria were extracted from the selected papers.

The primary search included 8876 papers. After studying the articles' titles, abstracts, and full texts, 9 articles and 14 reports were selected for final analysis. After the final analysis, 19 criteria were extracted. Due to diversity of criteria in terms of number and nature, they were divided into three categories. The categories included intervention-related criteria, disease-related criteria, and community-related criteria. The largest number of criteria belonged to the first category. Indeed, the most widely applied criteria included cost-effectiveness (20), effectiveness (19), budget impact (12), equity (12), and burden of disease (10).

According to the results, different criteria were identified in terms of number and nature in developing BHBP in world health systems. It seems that certain criteria, such as cost-effectiveness, effectiveness, budget impact, burden of disease, equity, and necessity, that were most widely utilized in countries under study could be for designing BHBP with regard to social, cultural, and economic considerations.