Public–Private Partnerships as Decentralization Strategy in Health Sector

Abstract

Recently, there has been considerable shift towards market mechanisms encompassing different forms of partnerships to make public services more efficient and effective. Public–private partnerships (PPPs), a form of partnership, combine government resources with the private institutions to achieve government and social goals. PPPs for health now have been considered as a process or strategy of collaborating between private sector organisations and a health programme at different levels—international, regional, national and local levels. The notion of PPPs in health is to promote collaboration in order to improve health system performance as opposed to divesting in public service provision. It is also believed that PPPs would equally bring some negative effects on public service delivery. Although approaches vary from contracting, outsourcing, privatisation and PPPs, the purpose of adopting PPPs in health systems is to prioritise competition, efficiency and effectiveness in response to globalisation, changes in technology and new approaches to managing public service delivery. Is that often the case? This chapter highlights the concepts of PPPs and their roles in health care decentralization and explores to what extent private providers working in partnership with public sector departments would bring positive effects on health service delivery, care provision and health infrastructure development.