Innovative health service delivery models in low and middle income countries - what can we learn from the private sector?

Background  

The poor in low and middle income countries have limited access to health services due to limited purchasing power, residence in underserved areas, and inadequate health literacy. This produces significant gaps in health care delivery among a population that has a disproportionately large burden of disease. They frequently use the private health sector, due to perceived or actual gaps in public services. A subset of private health organizations, some called social enterprises, have developed novel approaches to increase the availability, affordability and quality of health care services to the poor through innovative health service delivery models. This study aims to characterize these models and identify areas of innovation that have led to effective provision of care for the poor.     

Have structural adjustments led to health sector reform in Africa?

This paper explores the issue of whether and how structural adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa has altered the level and nature of state involvement in the health care system. Stabilization and structural adjustment generally entail a reduction in aggregate demand, especially government spending, and a reduced role for the state in the provision of many goods and services. Consequently, there is an a priori concern that stabilization and adjustment in Africa may have resulted in lower health expenditures with deleterious effects on the health status of the population, particularly the poor. This paper concludes that structural adjustment programs in Africa did not reduce public health expenditures. In fact, many countries experienced higher real expenditures after adjustment. The fact that many indicators of health status deteriorated during the 1980s, however, presents somewhat of a paradox given the patterns of health expenditures. This paradox is resolved, by an investigation of the intrasectoral allocation of health expenditures which reveals that there are systematic biases in public expenditures towards tertiary and curative care, and a general weakness in the public sector's capacity to deliver adequate health care services even with higher real health sector budgets. In many countries, these biases have persisted despite government and donor intentions to promote health care reform. Finally, the paper reviews a set of policy and institutional issues which hinder the efficient use of budget resources, including overcentralization of health care administration, inappropriate drug and supply procurement practices, the lack of mechanisms for cost recovery, and poor organization, financial and personnel management. At each level of analysis, the paper catalogs those instances where progress is being made towards effective health care reform, including intrasectoral budget rationalization, administrative decentralization, the adoption of user fees for cost recovery, privatization in service delivery, particularly through non-governmental organizations, and organizational and management reform.     

疾控机构参与基本公共卫生服务均等化情况分析

目的了解浙江省疾控机构参与基本公共卫生服务均等化情况,为制定相关政策提供依据。方法设计专项调查表,调查各级疾控机构相关业务人员基本公共卫生服务认知情况、参与基本公共卫生服务项目情况、存在问题及对策等。结果被调查者对基本公共卫生服务均等化疾控相关知识认知程度较高（＆gt;90%）,但对于服务主体、服务特征等认知较差。大部分疾控机构制订并实行了针对社区医疗卫生机构的基本公共卫生服务指导方案或要点,开展了相关培训并参与了考核工作,分别占94.90%、96.94%和92.86%,但在省级项目基础上增加本地项目的机构仅占13.27%;疾控机构参与基本公共卫生服务项目存在参与人员不足（91.10%）、政府经费保障不足（86.64%）,以及疾控机构与社区卫生服务机构资源整合不足、缺乏合力（82.07%）等问题。结论疾控人员对于基本公共卫生服务均等化的认知程度普遍较高;疾控机构基本公共卫生服务项目参与率较高,但主动增加项目不足;人员不足、经费保障不到位以及医防整合不足是目前疾控机构参与基本公共卫生服务均等化的主要问题。应进一步增加基层疾控机构人员,保证相关工作经费投入,加强医防整合,更好地发挥疾控机构在促进基本公共卫生服务均等化中的作用。     

基于超效率DEA的天津市基本公共卫生配置资源效率研究

评价天津市各辖区基本公共卫生服务的资源配置效率,寻求有效的资源配置措施和方法,为进一步优化卫生资源配置提供参考依据。方法利用数据包络分析,对天津市16辖区的基本公共卫生服务进行效率评价。结果天津市基本公共卫生服务的资源配置效率整体不高,仅有5辖区达到了规模最优,多数区非DEA有效,且投入过剩与产出不足并存。结论为了达到最优的基本公共卫生服务效率,政府及各级基本公共卫生服务机构必须有效地完善、落实相关政策,优化资源投入结构,统筹地区差异,加强资源供给管理,提高资源利用效率。     

Guthrie house: a rural community organizing for wellness

This paper is interested in the issue of community participation and empowerment in health care provision and decision-making. In Canada, the present scope for public involvement in planning or managing the state's health and social services system is limited. This poses a particular problem for rural communities--places where the provision of health care services has historically been limited when compared to urban locations. These rural communities are now facing a double burden as public policy moves increasingly towards a retrenchment of the welfare state. This paper examines one rural community's response to this double burden. The village of Elgin in rural Ontario recently established Guthrie House, a community-based resource center for health and wellness services. Community participation in this case involved a level of control whereby local citizens together defined the health and social care services that they saw as best meeting the needs of their community. This form of community participation is considerably different from the forms of public involvement in the established medical system and represents a critical link to 'empowering' the local community as partners in health care. Through an examination of Guthrie House, the paper presents a review of some critical 'characteristics' which mark successful community self-help organizations and concludes with a discussion of the policy implications for greater community participation. It is argued that such community participation in health care is a policy option which government should be paying particular attention to in these times of fiscal constraint, increasing health care needs and increasing consumer dissatisfaction with government service provision mechanisms.     

Medical technology and developing countries: the case of Brazil

Developing countries, faced with severe resource limitations, are trying to develop modern health care services that deliver sensible medical technologies. Because of their lack of development, these countries must import much technology, while often lacking the expertise to make wise choices. In this article, the case of Brazil is examined. Brazil has shared many of the problems of other developing countries, including inadequate access of the population to health services, maldistribution and excessive use of technology, a relatively weak national industry for production of drugs and medical devices, a weak policy structure for dealing with medical technology, and little tradition of using research or policy analysis as a guide to action. Since the election in 1985 that returned Brazil to democratic rule, the government has taken active steps to address many of these problems. The example of Brazil is important for all of the developing world to examine and follow, where applicable. In addition, North American and European aid programs could play a much more constructive role in helping less developed countries develop their health care services. International organizations such as the World Health Organization must also be active in assisting such countries to improve their decisions concerning medical technology.     

Technical workshop report: Working Group II: agricultural occupational health and safety services for farmers and ranchers

This work group felt that there is compelling evidence that effective occupational health services are essential to improve the serious occupational safety and health problems in agriculture. Program initiatives may be stimulated by federal and state governments, but development and implementation must involve the grassroots farm community and local resources. Other countries (Sweden, Finland, Canada) are far ahead of the United States in this area and serve as examples. Developing services should be comprehensive and should include clinical, technical, and educational efforts. Marketing programs to the public must include grassroots involvement. Surveillance and program evaluation are essential in any new program efforts. Funding such programs must be shared by federal, state, local, and private resources. Regulatory options should be a minimal part of such a program, but mandatory rollover protective devices and mandatory reporting seems to be one feasible regulatory option.     

Limited good and limited vision: multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and global health policy

Almost a third of the world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the organism that causes tuberculosis disease. Most of those infected never fall ill, but individuals who do can recover if they have access to effective therapies. This paper discusses certain ethical and ethnographic issues raised by cases in which patients are infected with M. tuberculosis strains resistant to at least the two most powerful drugs on which therapy is usually based. In most poor countries, people with such multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) were, until very recently, considered "untreatable." In addition to being consigned to a permanent state of ill health, they were also at risk of transmitting their resistant strain to others. In this paper we discuss the logic of "cost-effectiveness," which international health policy-makers utilized to make the case that treatment of MDR-TB is not feasible in resource poor settings. These analyses, which have held sway in public health policy for many years, are flawed, we argue, because they ignore and conceal the social determinants of access to health services and often rely on assumptions rather than evidence. We propose that policies based solely on analyses of cost-effectiveness of specific interventions for individual settings can be short-sighted and, because they do not pay sufficient attention to the social, political, economic, epidemiological and pathophysiological factors influencing the production of health, will ultimately hinder progress toward effective global TB control.     

Climate change: the public health response

There is scientific consensus that the global climate is changing, with rising surface temperatures, melting ice and snow, rising sea levels, and increasing climate variability. These changes are expected to have substantial impacts on human health. There are known, effective public health responses for many of these impacts, but the scope, timeline, and complexity of climate change are unprecedented. We propose a public health approach to climate change, based on the essential public health services, that extends to both clinical and population health services and emphasizes the coordination of government agencies (federal, state, and local), academia, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations.     

An approach to effective health care delivery in a developing nation: A case for Nigeria

Delivery of health care services in the developing countries is at present, yielding little or no results to the people being served due to programme structurelessness and lack of goal orientation. Those charged with programmes relating to health services have failed to identify the health problems in their communities. Even when these problems are identified, lack of planning, effective programme execution and evaluation has often brought failures. The result has been poor health for the people.If health services programmes are to be considered successful there must be guarantees that such services are at the disposal of the people wherever they are. In order to achieve complete geographical and population coverage of health services, a state should be organized into provinces, divisions, districts and sectors with the health services also organized according to levels of care (i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary levels). Thus, in any given province, we shall have a number of divisions, districts and sectors, each determined to serve a certain size of population. Also, the size of the population required for effective provision of different levels of care will increase with the complexity of the medical condition involved. Connecting these levels of care, must be referral system whereby complex cases at lower levels can be spent to the level immediately above.Since many health problems are preventable, particular attention must be paid to this area in the overall health services programme. Notably among measures to be taken are effective immunization programmes and environmental health services, both to be strongly sipported with health education.Immunization of the whole population must be the first task in the field of public health. In addition to coverage of all ages in mass immunization at the onset, a further campaign for routine childhood immunization should be essentially carried out.Another important area is environmental health. At present, a considerable number of the health problems in our society are the consequences of wide range of environmental factors. Most health hazards from the environment are those resulting from water supply, food sanitation, waste disposal, housing, inadequate rodent and insect control, pets and domestic animals, occupational source, air pollution and accidents.     

Experiences in paying for health care in India's voluntary sector

This article summarizes the results of four in-depth case studies on the financing and costs of the health care programmes of well-known non-government organizations (NGOs) in India. These organizations have shown a high degree of creativity and innovation in developing varied sources of financing to reduce dependency and enable them to sustain their programmes. Government funds play a major role in supporting these voluntary health activities, with less significant roles played by foreign donations, user charges, pre-paid memberships, and public fund raising. Some effective methods of assuring access for poor clients while developing self financing are described. Cost studies of the NGOs' health schemes indicate that they operate at least as efficiently as public services and primarily supplement rather than substitute for such services. Suggestions for further development of voluntary sector financing are put forward.     

Priority setting of public spending in developing countries: do not try to do everything for everybody

BACKGROUND: Public spending on health care in many developing countries falls short to provide a comprehensive set of essential health services, which indicates the need to target and prioritize resources. However, governments often attempt to provide free services to the whole population, and often spend resources on low-impact services. This results in an inequitable and inefficient use of resources. METHODS: This paper presents a rational approach to targeting and prioritization of public spending, with an application to Ghana. First, interventions were tested against the economic justification for public funding, to define to whom spending should be targeted. Second, resulting interventions were prioritized on the basis of medical and non-medical criteria. RESULTS: The step-wise approach led to a rank ordering of interventions with a specification whether public spending should be targeted at the whole population or the poor only. Disease control priorities are prevention of mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission and oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrhea in childhood, and public funding of these interventions is warranted for the whole population. Case-management of pneumonia in childhood is also a priority but public funding should be targeted at the poor only. Low priorities for public funding are certain interventions to control blood pressure, tobacco and alcohol abuse, be it for the whole population or the poor only. CONCLUSION: Governments should not try to provide everything for everybody. This may help health systems to move towards a more equitable and efficient use of resources.     

Regulating India's health services: To what end? What future?

India has a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework and large public health delivery system which are disconnected from the realities of health care delivery and financing for most Indians. In reviewing the current bureaucratic approach to regulation, we find an extensive set of rules and procedures, though we argue it has failed in three critical ways, namely to (1) protect the interests of vulnerable groups; (2) demonstrate how health financing meets the public interests; (3) generate the trust of providers and the public. The paper reviews the state of alternative approaches to regulation of health services in India, using consumer and market based approaches, as well as multi-actor and collaborative approaches. We argue that poor regulation is a symptom of poor governance and that simply creating and enforcing the rules will continue to have limited effects. Rather than advocate for better implementation and expansion of the current bureaucratic approach, where Ministries of Health focus on their roles as inspectorate and provider, we propose that India's future health system is more likely to achieve its goals through greater attention to consumer and other market oriented approaches, and through collaborative mechanisms that enhance accountability. Civil society organizations, the media, and provider organizations can play more active parts in disclosing and using information on the use of health resources and the performance of public and private providers. The overview of the health sector would be more effective, if Indian Ministries of Health were to actively facilitate participation of these key stakeholders and the use of information.     

Rural Health Care in Bolivia*

ABSTRACT: Eighty percent of Bolivians live in rural areas. However, because of a lack of resources and an urban / curative health sector orientation, rural primary health care services are woefully inadequate. Consequently, Bolivia has the worst health conditions of any of the Latin American countries. The broader factors which underlie Bolivia's poor health conditions, such as the low standard of living and impediments to socioeconomic development, are reviewed. Rural primary health programs are hampered by a lack of local support, overdependence on central and distant Ministry of Health supervisory staff, a lack of strong national political support for rural primary health care programs, the absence of public sector support for social programs, and a lack of appropriately trained health providers who are comfortable in the rural sociocultural mileu of community-oriented primary health care. The experience of Andean Rural Health Care is briefly described, and the potential contribution of private organizations working with local communities and with the Ministry of Health is addressed. The most viable option for improving rural primary health care in Bolivia is the census-based community-oriented approach.     

Planning health sector expenditure in support of PHC

This paper describes an approach to financial control whichhas been common to the public sector health services in a numberof countries and it identifies some problems it presents tothe effective implementation of PHC development policies. Amongthe functions of existing systems are the control of expenditure,monitoring for theft and annual budgeting. As the health sectoris transformed from a relatively simple, urban-based serviceto one undertaking activities throughout the country, adaptationswill be required. Furthermore, in order to oversee a significantchange in the pattern of resource allocation, it will be necessaryto integrate the planning system more closely with the preparationof the budget and with the approaches to financial control.While the focus is on the need to strengthen the instrumentsfor resource management within the public services, the importanceof taking a broader view of the health sector is recognized.Those responsible for assuring the effective use of scarce resourcesmust take cognisance of the impact of private health activitieson PHC development. Some implications which this has for plannersare explored.     

论提供公共卫生服务的组织形态及其选择

公共卫生服务含有多个具体的性质各异的项目,适合采用不同的组织形态来提供,既可以是公营卫生服务机构,也可以是私立的非营利组织、合作组织和营利组织。每种组织都有自己的优点和缺陷。未来中国应该形成由多种组织形态有机构成的网络化体系来提供公共卫生服务。     

Self management or managerial autonomy. SESPAS report, 2012

Western countries with strong primary care systems organize their health services around this healthcare modality, which serves as a gateway to the system and is characterized by multidisciplinary teamwork, management transferred to the teams and a broad services portfolio. The contractual relationship between professionals and the public health system is a useful tool to modulate the efficiency of services and their ability to meet the expectations of citizens and professionals. Some countries choose to contract professionals directly, either individually or through a professional organization, an option known as a self-management system. Others opt to contract public or private entities, which in turn recruit health professionals as employees. In the latter countries, the concept of management decentralization and managerial autonomy has arisen. In Spain, only Catalonia has enabled professional entities to be hired to provide public health services, through commercial formulas, i.e. in a competitive market relationship. This relationship allows the use of corporate governance mechanisms that are not subject to public control through state intervention. The other forms of management promoted in Spain to avoid the controls of state intervention - foundations or associations - have been unsuccessful, except in the autonomous region of Valencia and some models in the autonomous region of Madrid.     

¿Autogestión o autonomía de gestión? Informe SESPAS 2012

Western countries with strong primary care systems organize their health services around this healthcare modality, which serves as a gateway to the system and is characterized by multidisciplinary teamwork, management transferred to the teams and a broad services portfolio. The contractual relationship between professionals and the public health system is a useful tool to modulate the efficiency of services and their ability to meet the expectations of citizens and professionals. Some countries choose to contract professionals directly, either individually or through a professional organization, an option known as a self-management system. Others opt to contract public or private entities, which in turn recruit health professionals as employees.In the latter countries, the concept of management decentralization and managerial autonomy has arisen. In Spain, only Catalonia has enabled professional entities to be hired to provide public health services, through commercial formulas, i.e. in a competitive market relationship. This relationship allows the use of corporate governance mechanisms that are not subject to public control through state intervention. The other forms of management promoted in Spain to avoid the controls of state intervention - foundations or associations - have been unsuccessful, except in the autonomous region of Valencia and some models in the autonomous region of Madrid.     

Exploration of current challenges in rehabilitation from the perspective of healthcare professionals: Switzerland as a case in point

Rehabilitation is a health strategy with the potential to mitigate the negative health consequences of population ageing and the rise of noncommunicable diseases. Literature indicates that even in high-income countries rehabilitation services can be improved. The purpose of this study is to engage rehabilitation professionals in Switzerland in identifying and prioritizing current challenges in the development and delivery of rehabilitation services.We conducted a qualitative study consisting of interviews with key informants and a stakeholder consultation. Thirteen interviews were conducted and analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Identified challenges were refined, extended, and prioritized through multi-voting in a workshop attended by a wide range of rehabilitation professional organizations. Final results were subject to further analysis and member checking.We identified nineteen challenges, of which eight were viewed as highly important. Results suggest the need to revise the financing system for rehabilitation services, highlighted a poor integration of rehabilitation in primary care, a lack of academic rehabilitation training, and insufficient funding for research. Finally, we identified a perceived lack of awareness for rehabilitation among policy-makers and the public.This study provides a unique perspective on challenges in rehabilitation practice and policy and offers an opportunity for professionals, policy-makers, and other stakeholders, to influence and guide the rehabilitation service agenda both in Switzerland and in terms of mutual learning also in other countries.