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Working with private sector providers for better health care: an introductory guide
Strategies for working with private sector providers to improve health care in developing countries
Authors:
E. Smith; R. Brugha; A. Zwi
Publisher:
Options Consultancy Services, 2001
This guide, produced by Options Consultancy Services, aims to provide a practical but critical approach to developing strategies for working with private sector providers (PSPs) for better health care in developing countries. Its focus is the encounter of individual people, especially poor people, with individual private health providers and the factors that determine the health and financial outcome of that interaction. It examines critically, and in some detail, thirteen strategies grouped under coverage, quality and cost objectives with a policy-maker, provider or people focus.
The guide concludes by suggesting several steps that decision makers can take to assist in strategy selection. The first step is to gather information on the existing health care market, from both a user and a service provision perspective; and secondly, to identify and access information sources to fill current information gaps. This information can then be used to prioritise policy objectives around coverage, quality and/or control of excessive costs. The guide suggests that an inventory of existing policies, capacity and financing mechanisms is useful. It then proposes tools and approaches for taking this information forward with the different stakeholders. Finally, it indicates how different health system patterns can direct decision-makers towards particular strategies. [adapted from author]
