Volume 15, Issue 1, May 2015, Pages 180–187
Alka Barua1
1 Senior Consulting Associate, Gynuity Health Projects, India
Original language: English
Copyright © 2015 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Public Private Partnerships have been implemented in India to help improve the performance of the public health sector. The experiences of implementation have been a mixed bag with some successes. There have been concerns during implementation about the designs not accounting for disparate motivations, ambiguous roles and risks to partners that affect the management, sustainability and ultimately the services. A study was conducted to understand the designs of three Public Private Partnerships addressing reproductive health needs of women at primary and secondary health care level in rural Gujarat. These partnerships were with a corporate body, a Non-Government Organisation and with private empanelled gynaecologists respectively. Review of data and relevant documents from the government and private partners and in-depth interviews with select key informants were conducted. The Government of Gujarat has drafted elaborate conceptual framework and guidelines for Public Private Partnership. Yet, the non-competitive selection of partners, conflict of interest, lack of commitment and attention to standards of care and insufficient monitoring and accountability mechanisms all point towards weaknesses in design of these models. Implementation without fidelity to the purpose and design of the PPP and un-addressed risks to partners make these partnerships vulnerable to exploitation and un-sustainable in the original format. The study highlights the need for thorough review of partners and evaluation of existing models to ensure that the potential benefits of PPPs are not frittered away at the altar of weak designs and lack of monitoring.
Author Keywords: Design, Selection, Roles, Responsibilities, Risks, Sustainability.
Alka Barua1
1 Senior Consulting Associate, Gynuity Health Projects, India
Original language: English
Copyright © 2015 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Public Private Partnerships have been implemented in India to help improve the performance of the public health sector. The experiences of implementation have been a mixed bag with some successes. There have been concerns during implementation about the designs not accounting for disparate motivations, ambiguous roles and risks to partners that affect the management, sustainability and ultimately the services. A study was conducted to understand the designs of three Public Private Partnerships addressing reproductive health needs of women at primary and secondary health care level in rural Gujarat. These partnerships were with a corporate body, a Non-Government Organisation and with private empanelled gynaecologists respectively. Review of data and relevant documents from the government and private partners and in-depth interviews with select key informants were conducted. The Government of Gujarat has drafted elaborate conceptual framework and guidelines for Public Private Partnership. Yet, the non-competitive selection of partners, conflict of interest, lack of commitment and attention to standards of care and insufficient monitoring and accountability mechanisms all point towards weaknesses in design of these models. Implementation without fidelity to the purpose and design of the PPP and un-addressed risks to partners make these partnerships vulnerable to exploitation and un-sustainable in the original format. The study highlights the need for thorough review of partners and evaluation of existing models to ensure that the potential benefits of PPPs are not frittered away at the altar of weak designs and lack of monitoring.
Author Keywords: Design, Selection, Roles, Responsibilities, Risks, Sustainability.
How to Cite this Article
Alka Barua, “A Study of Three Public Private Partnership Models for Health in Gujarat, India,” International Journal of Innovation and Scientific Research, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 180–187, May 2015.
