essay about government hospital

Essay on Government Hospital

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100 Words Essay on Government Hospital

Introduction.

Government hospitals are medical facilities run by the state. They provide healthcare services to all, particularly focusing on the underprivileged and those who cannot afford private hospitals.

These hospitals offer a range of services including general medicine, surgery, maternity care, and emergency services. They often have specialized departments like cardiology, neurology, and orthopedics.

The major benefit of government hospitals is their affordability. They provide free or low-cost treatment, making healthcare accessible to everyone.

Despite their benefits, government hospitals face challenges like overcrowding, lack of advanced equipment, and sometimes, shortage of staff.

Government hospitals play a crucial role in society. They need continuous improvement and support to serve the public better.

250 Words Essay on Government Hospital

Government hospitals play a pivotal role in providing healthcare services to the public, especially in developing countries. These institutions, funded by the state, aim to offer affordable and quality healthcare to all, irrespective of their socioeconomic status.

The Significance of Government Hospitals

The importance of government hospitals cannot be overstated. They serve as the primary healthcare providers for the majority of the population, particularly the economically disadvantaged and those residing in remote areas. With their wide reach and subsidized services, they ensure that healthcare is not a privilege but a right for every citizen.

Challenges Faced by Government Hospitals

Despite their noble intentions, government hospitals often grapple with numerous challenges. These include inadequate funding, shortage of skilled medical personnel, and insufficient infrastructure. These issues often translate into long waiting times, compromised patient care, and a general perception of inefficiency.

Improving the Efficacy of Government Hospitals

Addressing these challenges requires a multi-pronged approach. Increasing budgetary allocations for public health, implementing robust recruitment and training programs for medical personnel, and investing in infrastructure development are some of the key steps. Moreover, leveraging technology for better management of resources can significantly enhance the efficiency of these institutions.

In conclusion, government hospitals are instrumental in ensuring that healthcare is accessible and affordable for all. While they face several challenges, strategic planning and investment can significantly improve their performance, thereby strengthening the overall public health system.

500 Words Essay on Government Hospital

Government hospitals are public health facilities primarily funded and managed by the state or national government. They are integral components of a nation’s healthcare system, providing affordable and often free medical services to the public. However, their efficiency and effectiveness have been a subject of debate, underlined by concerns over quality of care, infrastructure, and resource allocation.

Role and Importance of Government Hospitals

Government hospitals play a crucial role in providing healthcare services to the underprivileged and marginalized sections of society. They are often the only accessible healthcare facilities for people living in remote and rural areas. They also serve as training grounds for medical professionals, fostering the development of healthcare skills and expertise.

Despite their importance, government hospitals face numerous challenges. These include inadequate infrastructure, shortage of medical personnel, and insufficient funding. The high patient load often leads to overcrowded wards and long waiting times, compromising the quality of healthcare. Moreover, the lack of advanced medical equipment and technology can limit the scope of treatment options available to patients.

Quality of Care in Government Hospitals

The quality of care in government hospitals is a contentious issue. While some hospitals maintain commendable standards, others fall short due to resource constraints and management inefficiencies. The perception of subpar service in government hospitals has led to a preference for private healthcare among those who can afford it. However, it is essential to note that many government hospitals deliver critical services, including emergency care, childbirth, and disease control, often in challenging circumstances.

Reforms and Improvement Strategies

Addressing the issues plaguing government hospitals requires comprehensive reforms and strategies. These could include increased funding, improved management practices, and the adoption of modern medical technologies. It is also crucial to focus on capacity building to ensure a sufficient number of trained healthcare professionals. Public-private partnerships could be explored as a means to leverage the efficiency of the private sector while ensuring the accessibility and affordability of public healthcare.

In conclusion, government hospitals are an essential part of a nation’s healthcare system, particularly for the underserved sections of society. While they face significant challenges, these can be addressed through strategic reforms and investments. The aim should be to ensure that these hospitals can deliver quality healthcare to all, thereby playing their part in achieving the broader goal of universal health coverage.

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Essay on Hospital

500 words essay on  hospital.

Hospitals are institutions that deal with health care activities. They offer treatment to patients with specialized staff and equipment. In other words, hospitals serve humanity and play a vital role in the social welfare of any society. They have all the facilities to deal with varying diseases to make the patient healthy. The essay on hospital will take us through their types and importance.

Types of Hospitals

Generally, there are two types of hospitals, private hospitals and government hospitals. An individual or group of physicians or organization run private hospitals. On the other hand, the government runs the government hospital.

There are also semi-government hospitals that a private and organization and government-run together. Further, there are general hospitals that deal with different kinds of healthcare but with a limited capacity.

General hospitals treat patients from any type of disease belonging to any sex or age. Alternatively, there are specialized hospitals that limit their services to a particular health condition like oncology, maternity and more.

The main aim of hospitals is to offer maximum health services and ensure care and cure. Further, there are other hospitals also which serve as training centres for the upcoming physicians and offer training to professionals.

Many hospitals also conduct research works for people. The essential services which are available in a hospital include emergency and casualty services, OPD services, IPD services, and operation theatre.

Importance of Hospitals

Hospitals are very important for us as they offer extensive treatment to all. Moreover, they are equipped with medical equipment which helps in the diagnosis and treatment of many types of diseases.

Further, one of the most important functions of hospitals is that they offer multiple healthcare professionals. It is filled with a host of doctors, nurses and interns. When a patient goes to a hospital, many doctors do a routine check-up to ensure maximum care.

Similarly, when there are multiple doctors in one place, you can take as many opinions as you want. Further, you will never be left unattended with the availability of such professionals. It also offers everything under one roof.

For instance, in the absence of hospitals, we would have to go to different places to look for specialist doctors in their respective clinics. This would have just increased the hassle and waste energy and time.

But, hospitals narrow down this search to a great level. Hospitals are also a great source of employment for a large section of society. Apart from the hospital staff, there are maintenance crew, equipment handlers and more.

In addition, they also provide cheaper healthcare as they offer treatment options for patients from underprivileged communities. We also use them to raise awareness regarding different prevention and vaccination drives. Finally, they also offer specialized treatment for a particular illness.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Hospital

We have generally associated hospital with illness but the case is the opposite of wellness. In other words, we visit the hospital all sick and leave healthy or better than before. Moreover, hospitals play an essential role in offering consultation services to patients and making the population healthier.

FAQ of Essay on Hospital

Question 1: What is the importance of hospitals?

Answer 1: Hospitals are significant as they treat minor and serious diseases, illnesses and disorders of the body function of varying types and severity. Moreover, they also help in promoting health, giving information on the prevention of illnesses and providing curative services.

Question 2: What are the services of a hospital?

Answer 2: Hospitals provide many services which include short-term hospitalization. Further, it also offers emergency room services and general and speciality surgical services. Moreover, they also offer x-ray and radiology and laboratory services.

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Pros and Cons of Government Healthcare

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Government healthcare refers to government funding of healthcare services via direct payments to doctors, hospitals, and other providers. In the U.S. healthcare system , medical professionals are not employed by the government. Instead, they provide medical and health services privately and are reimbursed by the government for these services, in much the same way that insurance companies reimburse them.

An example of a successful U.S. government healthcare program is Medicare, established in 1965 to provide health insurance for people aged 65 and over or who meet other criteria such as disability.

For many years, the U.S. was the only industrialized country in the world, democratic or non-democratic, without universal healthcare for all citizens provided by government-funded coverage. But in 2009, that changed. Here's everything that happened and why it matters still today.

50 Million Uninsured Americans in 2009

In mid-2009, Congress worked to reform U.S. healthcare insurance coverage, which at that time left more than 50 million men, women, and children uninsured and without access to adequate medical and health services .

This deficit was due to the fact that healthcare coverage for all people, except for some low-income children and those covered by Medicare, was provided only by insurance companies and other private-sector corporations. This made it inaccessible for many Americans.

Private company insurers proved ineffective at controlling costs and providing inclusive care, some actively working to exclude as many people from healthcare coverage as possible.

Explained Ezra Klein for The Washington Post : "The private insurance market is a mess. It's supposed to cover the sick and instead competes to insure the well. It employs platoons of adjusters whose sole job is to get out of paying for needed health care services that members thought were covered," (Klein 2009).

In fact, multi-million bonuses were even awarded annually to top healthcare executives as an incentive to deny coverage to policyholders.

As a result, in the United States pre-2009, more than eight in ten of individuals uninsured were from families living 400% below the Federal Poverty Level. Non-white populations were also disproportionately uninsured; Hispanics had an uninsured rate of 19% and Blacks had a rate of 11% though people of color only made up 43% of the population. Finally, 86% of uninsured individuals were adults not classified as elderly.

In 2007, Slate reported, "The current system is increasingly inaccessible to many poor and lower-middle-class people ... those lucky enough to have coverage are paying steadily more and/or receiving steadily fewer benefits," (Noah 2007).

This widespread issue led to a reform campaign begun by the Democratic party and supported by the president.

Reform Legislation

In mid-2009, things got heated when several coalitions of Congressional Democrats crafted competing healthcare insurance reform legislation. Republicans did not contribute much substantive healthcare reform legislation in 2009.

President Obama voiced support for universal healthcare coverage for all Americans, which would be provided by selecting among various coverage options, including an option for government-funded healthcare or a public plan option.

However, the President stayed safely on the political sidelines at first, forcing Congressional clashes, confusion, and setbacks in delivering on his campaign promise to "make available a new national health plan to all Americans."

Healthcare Packages Under Consideration

Most Democrats in Congress, like the president, supported universal healthcare coverage for all Americans offered through various insurance providers and many coverage options. Many saw a low-cost, government-funded healthcare option as important to include.

Under the multi-option scenario, Americans satisfied with their present insurance could opt to keep their coverage. Americans dissatisfied or without coverage could opt for government-funded coverage.

As this idea spread, Republicans complained that the free-market competition offered by a lower-cost public-sector plan would cause private-sector insurance companies to cut their services, lose customers, and inhibit profitability to the extent that many would be forced to go entirely out of business.

Many progressive liberals and Democrats believed strongly that the only fair, just U.S. healthcare delivery system would be a single-payer system, such as Medicare, in which only low-cost, government-funded healthcare coverage is provided to all Americans on an equal basis. Here's how the public responded to the debate.

Americans Favored a Public Plan Option

According to HuffPost journalist Sam Stein, the majority of people were in support of public healthcare options: "... 76 percent of respondents said it was either 'extremely' or 'quite' important to 'give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance,'" (Stein 2009).

Likewise, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that, "The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan—something like Medicare for those under 65—that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed," (Sack and Connelly 2009).

History of Government Healthcare

2009 was not the first year that government healthcare was talked about, and Obama was far from the first president to push for it; past presidents had proposed the idea decades before and taken steps in this direction. Democrat Harry Truman, for example, was the first U.S. President to urge Congress to legislate government healthcare coverage for all Americans.

According to Healthcare Reform in America by Michael Kronenfield, President Franklin Roosevelt intended for Social Security to also incorporate healthcare coverage for seniors, but shied away for fear of alienating the American Medical Association.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Medicare program, which is a single-payer, government healthcare plan. After signing the bill, President Johnson issued the first Medicare card to former President Harry Truman.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed his wife, well-versed attorney Hillary Clinton , to head a commission charged with forging a massive reform of U.S. healthcare. After major political missteps by the Clintons and an effective, fear-mongering campaign by Republicans, the Clinton healthcare reform package was dead by Fall 1994. The Clinton administration never tried again to overhaul healthcare, and Republican President George Bush was ideologically opposed to all forms of government-funded social services.

Again in 2008, healthcare reform was a top campaign issue among Democratic presidential candidates . Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that he would "make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses , to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress."

Pros of Government Healthcare

Iconic American consumer advocate Ralph Nader summed up the positives of government-funded healthcare from the patient's perspective:

• Free choice of doctor and hospital;
• No bills, no co-pays, no deductibles;
• No exclusions for pre-existing conditions; you are insured from the day you are born;
• No bankruptcies due to medical bills;
• No deaths due to lack of health insurance;
• Cheaper. Simpler. More affordable;
• Everybody in. Nobody out;
• Save taxpayers billions a year in bloated corporate administrative and executive compensation costs, (Nader 2009).

Other important positives of government-funded healthcare include:

• 47 millions Americans lacked healthcare insurance coverage as of the 2008 presidential campaign season. Soaring unemployment since then caused the ranks of the uninsured to swell past 50 million in mid-2009. Mercifully, government-funded healthcare provided access to medical services for all uninsured, and lower costs of government healthcare caused insurance coverage to be significantly more accessible to millions of individuals and businesses.
• Doctors and other medical professionals can now focus on patient care and no longer need to spend hundreds of wasted hours annually dealing with insurance companies. Patients, too, no longer need to fritter inordinate amounts of time haggling with insurance companies.

Cons of Government Healthcare

Conservatives and libertarians generally oppose U.S. government healthcare mainly because they don't believe that it's a proper role of government to provide social services to private citizens. Instead, conservatives believe that healthcare coverage should continue to be provided solely by private-sector, for-profit insurance corporations, or possibly by non-profit entities.

In 2009, a handful of Congressional Republicans suggested that perhaps the uninsured could obtain limited medical services via a voucher system and tax credits for low-income families. Conservatives also contended that lower-cost government healthcare would impose too great of a competitive advantage against for-profit insurers.

The Wall Street Journal argued: "In reality, equal competition between a public plan and private plans would be impossible. The public plan would inexorably crowd out private plans, leading to a single-payer system," (Harrington 2009).

From the patient's perspective, the negatives of government-funded healthcare include:

• A decrease in flexibility for patients to freely choose from a vast cornucopia of drugs, treatment options, and surgical procedures offered today by higher-priced doctors and hospitals.
• Fewer potential doctors may opt to enter the medical profession due to decreased opportunities for high compensation. Fewer doctors, coupled with skyrocketing demand for doctors, could eventually lead to a shortage of medical professionals and to longer waiting periods for appointments.

Healthcare Today

In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), often called Obamacare, was signed into law by President Obama. This act provides provisions that make healthcare more affordable such as tax credits to low-income families, expanded Medicaid coverage, and made more types of health insurance available to uninsured consumers at different prices and levels of protection. Government standards have been put in place to ensure that all health insurance covers a set of essential benefits. Medical history and pre-existing conditions are no longer legitimate grounds for denying coverage to anyone.

• Harrington, Scott. "The 'Public Plan' Would Be the Only Plan." The Wall Street Journal , 15 June 2009.
• Klein, Ezra. "Health Care Reform for Beginners: The Many Flavors of the Public Plan." The Washington Post , 2009.
• Kronenfeld, Jennie, and Michael Kronenfeld. Healthcare Reform in America: A Reference Handbook . 2nd ed., ABC-CLIO, 2015.
• Nader, Ralph. "Nader: Obama's Flip-Flop on Single Payer." Single Payer Action, 2009.
• Noah, Timothy. "A Short History of Health Care." Slate , 13 Mar. 2007.
• Sack, Kevin, and Marjorie Connelly. "In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health." The New York Times , 20 June 2009.
• Stein, Sam. "Obama Boost: New Poll Shows 76% Support for Choice of Public Plan." HuffPost , 25 May 2011.
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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 27 February 2018

Comparing public and private providers: a scoping review of hospital services in Europe

• Liina-Kaisa Tynkkynen 1 &
• Karsten Vrangbæk 2  

BMC Health Services Research volume  18 , Article number:  141 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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What is common to many healthcare systems is a discussion about the optimal balance between public and private provision. This paper provides a scoping review of research comparing the performance of public and private hospitals in Europe. The purpose is to summarize and compare research findings and to generate questions for further studies.

The review was based on a methodological approach inspired by the British EPPI-Centre’s methodology. This review was broader than review methodologies used by Cochrane and Campbell and included a wider range of methodological designs. The literature search was performed using PubMed, EconLit and Web of Science databases. The search was limited to papers published from 2006 to 2016. The initial searches resulted in 480 studies. The final sample was 24 papers. Of those, 17 discussed economic effects, and seven studies addressed quality.

Our review of the 17 studies representing more than 5500 hospitals across Europe showed that public hospitals are most frequently reported as having the best economic performance compared to private not-for-profit (PNFP) and private for-profit (PFP) hospitals. PNFP hospitals are second, while PFP hospitals are least frequently reported as superior. However, a sizeable number of studies did not find significant differences. In terms of quality, the results are mixed, and it is not possible to draw clear conclusions about the superiority of an ownership type. A few studies analyzed patient selection. They indicated that public hospitals tend to treat patients who are slightly older and have lower socioeconomic status, riskier lifestyles and higher levels of co-morbidity and complications than patients treated in private hospitals.

Conclusions

The paper points to shortcomings in the available studies and argues that future studies are needed to investigate the relationship between contextual circumstances and performance. A big weakness in many studies addressing economic effects is the failure to control for quality and other operational dimensions, which may have influenced the results. This weakness should also be addressed in future comparative studies.

Peer Review reports

Public funding, as well as public provision of healthcare services, has been a key feature of many modern welfare states. However, since the 1980s the realms of the public and private sectors have been redefined in many countries [ 43 ]. At the same time, systems financed through social or private insurance have developed new ways of organizing their relationships with providers. What is common to all healthcare systems is a discussion about the optimal balance between public and private provision.

In a seminal paper from 1963, Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that health care has a number of characteristics that violate the principles of a perfect market [ 3 ]. Healthcare consumers do not have sufficient information to know when and to what extent health care is needed or to compare alternatives. Externalities are not incorporated in decision making, and patients risk catastrophic losses in the event of serious illness. Attempts to solve this problem through private insurance carry other risks in terms of adverse selection and moral hazards. As a consequence, all modern healthcare systems have some degree of public involvement in the regulation, financing or provision of services. The implication is that health care is delivered in highly regulated markets with different combinations of public and private actors [ 7 ]. This leads us to ask whether there is evidence that private delivery organizations perform better than public delivery organizations in regulated health care markets.

We investigated this question by conducting a scoping review of the available evidence from recent studies within the European region. Although this region includes different types of healthcare systems, all countries rely considerably on public or not-for-profit providers in addition to some degree of private for-profit delivery. Focusing on the European region allowed us to include systems that are based on similar values about solidarity, while excluding studies from countries with radically different underlying values, such as the United States (US) and Singapore. At the same time, by including the entire region, we can expand on the degree of diversity and volume compared to previous studies, such as Tiemann et al. [ 50 ].

Our method was a scoping review which aimed to summarize and compare previous studies presenting evidence on differences in performance between public and private hospitals in European healthcare systems. Scoping reviews aim to “map rapidly the key concepts underpinning a research area and the main sources and types of evidence available and can be undertaken as stand-alone projects in their own right” [ 2 ]. The specific purpose of this review was to summarize and compare research findings, to relate the findings to previous reviews and to generate questions for further studies and systematic reviews.

Theoretical perspectives on public–private comparisons

Theoretical claims for positive effects of private ownership typically stem from public choice and property rights theories, which revolve around a competition and a public management/ownership argument, respectively [ 1 , 13 , 21 ]. The competition argument states that although healthcare markets may be imperfect, competition in itself can have beneficial effects. Private providers are forced by competitive pressure to optimize efficiency, while political and administrative pressures are more important for public providers. The lack of competitive pressures means that public managers are unable to measure the efficiency of their organizations against a commercial bottom line. Decisions on resource allocation and survival of the organization are left to public decision makers who cannot rely on market prices to generate an equilibrium between demand and supply.

The public management/ownership argument states that public sector organizations lack incentives to perform efficiently, these organizations often have broad and conflicting objectives, and they have no bankruptcy constraint. That is, they can continue to perform at sub-optimal levels without the risk of going out of business [ 1 ]. Furthermore, public organizations are not accountable to shareholders and owners and therefore, potentially have less external pressure to focus on innovation and technological development. Finally, it has been argued that a major difference between public and private hospitals is that public hospitals tend to operate in settings with “soft budget constraints” [ 22 , 40 ]. Some countries have tried to overcome this difference through various types of purchaser–provider splits [ 7 ] and legislation regarding hard budget constraints such as the Danish “Budget Law.”

Several theoretical contributions have nuanced and broadened the expectations from public choice and property rights theory [ 10 , 53 ]. Transaction cost economics emphasizes the importance of asset specificity and the measurability of the services that are provided in the market [ 15 , 54 ]. Rather than approaching public services as something that would, by definition, be more effectively produced in a private market, transaction cost economics hypothesizes that different service characteristics create more or less favorable conditions for in-house production and contracting [ 29 ]. Economic benefits from contracting are more likely to be realized if the quantity and quality of the services can be unambiguously described and measured. Otherwise, the costs of preparing tenders, evaluating bids, signing contracts and monitoring (and possibly sanctioning) service delivery are likely to be high. The largest economic effects, thus, are expected in technical services characterized by low asset specificity and high measurability, whereas smaller or even negative economic effects would be expected in complex services with high asset specificity and low measurability. For hospitals, this would lead us to expect that standardized procedures, for example, within some surgical areas and technical support functions are more likely to provide privatization benefits than complex services within the field of psychiatry or geriatrics, for instance. Hospitals are complex organizations, which typically include high- and low-specificity services. According to asset specificity theory, this leads to additional uncertainty about the benefits of privatization compared to the competition and ownership argument.

Industrial organization theory stresses a number of factors that make public markets distinct from traditional private markets and thus, create less optimal conditions for contracting out than expected by public choice theory [ 10 ]. According to this perspective, many public services are characterized by natural monopolies and high entrance costs, which limit competition and potentially make highly regulated markets with public providers less efficient than private markets [ 26 ]. Principal-agent theory further emphasizes the problem of information particularly in markets for welfare services, such as health, social and child care, where those buying the service have limited insight into the actual delivery practice of the agents. The presence of information asymmetries can lead to goal displacement and unwanted practices, such as “cream-skimming” (selection of the easiest tasks) and “parking” of the least profitable clients. This can endanger the system-level benefits assumed in perfect market conditions.

Decreasing marginal effects from contracting out suggests that economic effects tend to decrease over time [ 8 , 34 , 35 ]. There are two theoretical claims behind this argument. First, it is likely that rational purchasing organizations begin with contracting out those services and tasks where the largest gains are expected. Once the organizations have harvested the low hanging fruits, we can expect decreasing benefits from additional contracting out [ 9 , 34 ]. Second, involvement of private providers creates competitive pressure on public in-house production units, which may lead to more effective public production [ 5 ]. The market mechanism and exposure to competition, according to this argument, increase the efficiency of not only the contracted services but also the internally produced services [ 9 ]. Once the public providers have adjusted their operational practices, there will be few or no additional gains from switching to private providers.

The focus of this paper was to provide an empirical overview of efficiency results as reported in the empirical studies we identified in our database searches. The studies employed slightly different definitions and techniques (see Table  3 ), but data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontiers analysis (SFA) techniques dominate. Technical and allocative efficiency comprises “overall efficiency” [ 33 ]. Technical efficiency is producing the maximum amount of output from a given amount of input or alternatively, producing a given output with minimum input quantities, such that when an organization is technically efficient, it operates on its production frontier. Allocative efficiency occurs when the input mix is that which minimizes cost, given input prices or alternatively, when the output mix is that which maximizes revenue, given output prices.

In addition to efficiency differences, we reviewed evidence of potential quality differences and operational differences between public and privately owned organizations. Operational differences include factors such as patient selection, staff composition and procedures that may include thresholds for admissions. In terms of quality, the measurements used were diverse which made it difficult to draw clear conclusions across the studies. Still, quality and operational parameters are important as they relate to other policy objectives than efficiency. However, very few studies embarked on multidimensional assessments, and narrow efficiency measures were, by far, the most commonly reported dimension.

Setting the stage: The results from previous review studies

We start by summarizing state-of-the-art as presented in previous international review papers that examined differences in economic and/or quality performance between private and public hospital organizations. The review studies were not included in the core sample, as we focused on primary studies published from 2006 to 2016 within the European region. Herrera et al. [ 32 ] provided an overview of systematic reviews of the performance of private for-profit (PFP), private not-for-profit (PNFP) and public healthcare providers. The authors reviewed 5918 references to identify systematic reviews and ended up with nine relevant studies of sufficiently high quality. According to the nine systematic reviews, ownership appears to have an effect on health- and healthcare-related outcomes. In the comparison of PFP and PNFP providers, significant differences in terms of patient mortality and payments to facilities were found; both were higher in PFP facilities. In terms of quality and economic indicators, such as efficiency, there were no significant results. When PNFP and public providers were compared, as well as PFP and public providers, no clear differences were found. The overall conclusion from the study was that PFP providers seem to have poorer results than their PNFP counterparts, but there are still important evidence gaps in the literature that need to be covered.

Currie et al. [ 18 ] reviewed 34 studies. Most of these studies found no difference between PFP and PNFP full-service hospitals in terms of relative costs, quality of care or efficiency. Shen et al. [ 46 ] employed a quantitative method when reviewing 40 studies to identify the factors that explain the different findings for cost, revenue, profit margin and efficiency in the empirical literature. The authors found that variations in the magnitudes of ownership effects could be explained by the research focus and methodology of the individual studies. Studies using empirical methods that controlled for a few confounding factors tended to find larger differences between PFP and PNFP hospitals than studies that controlled for a wider range of confounding factors. Functional form and sample size also matter. Failure to apply log transformation to highly skewed expenditure data yielded misleadingly large estimated differences between PFP hospitals and PNFP hospitals. Studies with fewer than 200 observations also produced larger point estimates and wider confidence intervals. In a follow-up study conducted in 2008 by Egglestone et al., the authors found that pooled estimates of ownership effects are sensitive to the subset of studies included and the extent of overlap among hospitals analyzed in the underlying studies [ 23 ]. Ownership appears to be systematically related to differences in quality among hospitals in several contexts. Whether studies found PFP and public hospitals have higher mortality rates or rates of adverse events than their PNFP counterparts depended on the data sources, time period and region covered.

Tiemann et al. [ 50 ] investigated hospital ownership and efficiency in a review of studies that focused on Germany. The authors concluded that in line with the evidence found in studies from other countries, especially the US, the evidence from Germany suggests that private ownership (i.e., PFP and PNFP) is not necessarily associated with higher efficiency compared to public ownership. Irvin’s [ 36 ] review of studies of U.S. healthcare organizations showed that there is a quality gap between for-profit and nonprofit firms in some healthcare sectors (long-term care and mental health), depending on the prevailing type of financial payment for health care.

Hollingsworth [ 33 ] reviewed 317 studies published until 2006. He concluded cautiously “that public provision may be potentially more efficient than private, in certain settings.”

The overall impression from previous review studies is mixed. Some studies found that public hospitals are more efficient than private, while others found no significant difference. In general, it appears that PNFP hospitals tend to be closer to public hospitals in outperforming PFP hospitals in terms of quality and efficiency.

These diverging and somewhat surprising results inspired two groups of scholars [ 23 , 46 ]) to investigate the methodological basis for the results. The authors emphasized that case selection, methodological approach, time period and region are important underlying factors. A general observation across the studies was that the true effect of ownership seems to depend on the institutional context and that there are significant differences across regions and markets and over time.

The aim of this paper was to add an update to the results described above. We do that by providing a scoping review of peer-reviewed primary studies on public–private comparisons in specialized health care. We focused on studies that were conducted over the past decade within the European region.

Scoping reviews aim to “map rapidly the key concepts underpinning a research area and the main sources and types of evidence available and can be undertaken as stand-alone projects in their own right [ 2 ]. These reviews can typically have any of four motivations: (1) to “examine the extent, range and nature of research activity,” that is, a mapping to elucidate the extent and range of research in the area; (2) “to determine the value of undertaking a full systematic review”; (3) to “summarize and disseminate research findings”, operating in the direction of a systematic review, describing findings in greater detail and acting to summarize and disseminate findings to key stakeholder audiences with the intention of informing those stakeholders and eliminating or reducing the need to undertake a more in-depth review; and (4) to “identify research gaps in the existing literature.” In our case, we aimed to summarize research findings and generate questions for further studies and systematic reviews.

The review was based on a methodical approach inspired by the British EPPI-Centre’s methodology. This review was broader than review methodologies used within the Cochrane and Campbell collaborations, which emphasized randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the gold standard [ 38 ]. The present review also included a broader range of methodological designs and quantitative and qualitative studies Petersen et al. [ 42 ].

The literature search was conducted using PubMed, EconLit and Web of Science databases. The search was limited to papers published from 2006 to 2016. The limitation to the most recent decade was to avoid too much overlap with previous reviews while including the most recent studies. The inclusion criteria were papers written in English that dealt with the European region. The search strategies for the databases are presented in Table  1 .

The assessment and compilation of the final sample of relevant studies included three phases. Phase 1 included a search for relevant literature. The initial searches resulted in 480 studies: 354 from PubMed, 93 from EconLit and 53 from Web of Science of which some were duplicates. In phase 2, the abstracts were sorted using the categories not relevant, perhaps relevant and relevant. The not relevant category included papers that were not based in Europe or in which public–private comparisons were not found. The perhaps relevant category included papers whose suitability could not be judged solely on the abstract. Phase 3 included the final assessment of the relevance of the papers. For the relevant or perhaps relevant abstracts, the full papers were further examined, which resulted in grouping the studies that were finally included in the study and studies that were found not relevant after the full paper was read. In this phase, the not relevant papers were mostly theoretical papers, papers in which there were, eventually, no empirical public–private comparisons or very vague descriptions of the comparative material. At this stage of the process, we also excluded studies that addressed outsourcing, privatization and corporatization of hospitals with a focus on the dynamic process of transfer from one ownership type to another.

The final sample of studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria was 24 papers. All of the papers were published in peer-reviewed journals, and we did not conduct further quality evaluations as the papers had undergone a peer-review process (Fig.  1 ).

Overview of the review procedure

The studies represented 10 countries (Table  2 ). Since 2006, we observed a slight increase in the number of papers published on the subject (Fig.  2 ). This increase confirms the trend observed by Hollingsworth although he reported a “dramatic” increase over the past decades [ 33 ].

Number of studies by year

Most often, the studies in this sample involved comparisons of two groups: public and private hospitals ( n  = 13). However, the definitions of public and private varied. Eleven studies made clear distinctions between public, PFP and PNFP hospitals. Economic effects were explored in 17 studies and quality in seven studies (in three studies, it was used as a control for economic effects). Patient selection was mentioned in 15 studies but discussed explicitly in only seven studies.

The majority of the studies ( n  = 17) found in the database searches addressed the economic performance of public and private specialized care organizations. Seven studies addressed quality.

In terms of economic performance, 15 studies compared public (PUB) hospitals to PFP hospitals. Some studies reported technical, cost and profit efficiency (see Table 3 ). About half of these studies reported that public hospitals are superior to PFP hospitals in terms of efficiency. Most of the other studies found insignificant differences. Only one study reported that PFP hospitals have better profit efficiency. Eight studies compared the performance of PFP and PNFP hospitals. The majority of these studies found that PNFP hospitals are superior in terms of technical, cost and profit efficiency. Only one study pointed to responsiveness as a performance measure where PFP hospitals are better than PNFP hospitals. Finally, we found 11 studies compared PUB and PNFP hospitals. Most of these studies reported insignificant differences. In the remaining studies, we found slightly more studies presented PUB hospitals as superior to PNFP hospitals.

Overall, it seems that in terms of economic performance the public hospitals in the 17 studies representing more than 5500 hospitals across Europe perform better than PNFP hospitals, which, in turn, perform better than PFP hospitals. However, a sizeable number of studies did not find significant differences. In terms of quality, the results were mixed, and it is not possible to draw clear conclusions about the superiority of an ownership type.

The following sections provide details about the studies and their results.

Economic performance: Technical, cost and profit efficiency

Berry et al. [ 11 ] looked at operating room productivity in independent anesthesiology departments within German hospitals by using survey data from 87 hospitals. The authors hypothesized that operating room productivity is higher for hospitals run by private corporations compared to those run by the public sector. In the analysis, they found some confirmation of this idea but presented no significant results. The overall conclusion was that hospital size is the single largest predictor of productivity. However, the authors also suggested that micro-level management processes matter.

Kontodimopoulos et al. [ 39 ] found that after controlling for contextual characteristics technical efficiency was not significantly different between public and private dialysis facilities in Greece. The authors concluded that the context rather than ownership influences the performance of service providers. Barbetta et al. [ 6 ] stressed the importance of contextual factors and reimbursement practices in a study in which they looked at the technical efficiency of public and PNFP hospitals in Italy. The authors suggested that the differences in economic performance are related to institutional settings in which providers operate rather than to the ownership per se.

Czypionka et al. [ 19 ] looked at the impact of ownership on efficiency in Austria. Contrary to several previous studies, the authors found that there is a significant association between efficiency and ownership when comparing public and PNFP hospitals. The latter outperform public hospitals in technical efficiency due to different financial incentives.

Herr [ 30 ] found that in Germany PFP and PNFP hospitals are, on average, less cost-efficient and less technically efficient than publicly owned hospitals. This result can be partly explained by the importance of length of stay, which was, at the time, highest in PFP hospitals. Similar results were found in the study by Tiemann and Schreyögg [ 51 ] who evaluated the efficiency of public, PFP and PNFP hospitals in Germany. The results showed that public hospitals perform significantly better than PFP and PNFP hospitals. However, Herr et al. [ 31 ] found no significant differences in cost and profit efficiency between public and PFP hospitals in Germany.

Daidone and D’Amico [ 20 ] looked at how the production structure and level of specialization of a hospital affect its technical efficiency in Italy. They found that PFP hospitals use resources less efficiently compared to public and PNFP hospitals. PFP hospitals work in slightly over-staffed conditions for medical staff while public and especially PNFP hospitals are over-staffed by technical and administrative staff. Caballer-Tarazona et al. [ 17 ] compared public hospitals and public–private partnership (PPP) model hospitals in the Valencia region, but they were not able to determine the effect of ownership on efficiency due to the small sample size.

Comparisons of costs and other economic outcomes

Two studies—both from Switzerland employing similar data—found that hospital ownership does not affect hospital costs [ 24 , 25 ]. Bonastre et al. [ 14 ] analyzed the use of expensive anticancer drugs in public and private hospitals. The authors found that there were significant differences in terms of capacity, volume of activity and case mix between private and public hospitals, but after adjusting for the case mix, there were no differences in the use of expensive drugs between private and public hospitals.

Kondilis et al. [ 37 ] compared the operation and performance of PFP and public hospitals in Greece, focusing on differences in nurse staffing rates, average lengths of stay and Social Health Insurance (SHI) payments (including per diem fees, plus additional fee-for-service payments for services provided during hospitalization) for hospital care per patient discharged. The authors found that there were differences between PFP and public providers operating within the mixed healthcare system. PFP hospitals had lower bed capacity, lower occupancy rates and lower nurse (total and high qualified) staffing rates compared to public hospitals. PFP hospitals are also associated with higher unweighted length of stay and higher payments per discharge, at least in the case of discharged patients are beneficiaries of the SHI funds.

Siciliani et al. [ 45 ], in turn, studied patients’ length of stay in public hospitals, specialized public treatment centers and private treatment centers that provide elective hip replacement in England. The authors found that public and private specialized treatment centers, on average, had 18% and 40% shorter lengths of stay, respectively, compared with public hospitals. The result remained the same after controlling for age, gender, diagnosis and market characteristics. They did not find that patient selection explains differences in the length of stay in different hospital settings.

Augurzky et al. [ 4 ] studied the differences between public, PFP and PNFP ownership types in German hospitals based on their probability of default (PD). According to the results, public hospitals tend to exhibit a PD that is significantly above average. This association indicates that public ownership may conflict with financial sustainability. The authors explained it by stating that it is possible that public guarantees are the key driver to explain the differences. Public backing opens the window that ceteris paribus public hospitals may have higher PDs without being necessarily closer to insolvency than private hospitals.

Schwierz [ 49 ] studied ownership-specific differences in the responsiveness of changes in demand for hospital services in Germany from 1996 to 2006. He found that in the speed of adaptation to increasing demand PFP ownership is superior to public and PNFP ownership. PFP providers also tend to expand in markets with decreasing demand. This result can be partly explained by the results found by Augurzky et al. [ 4 ] for higher probability of default. That is, the defaults of public hospitals nurture the process of privatization of public sector actors in a situation in which the public sector needs to reform their facilities and work practices while at the same time containing costs.

Solborg Bjerrum et al. [ 47 , 48 ] conducted two studies in Denmark that addressed the quality of elective surgeries in public and private hospitals. The 2015 study concerned patients who had cataract surgery in either public or private eye clinics or hospitals from 2002 to 2010. The results showed that patients who have cataract surgery in public hospitals have an overall statistically significant 62% higher mortality rate compared to patients who have cataract surgery in private hospitals or clinics. The potential explanation may be in the patient selection since the results indicate that patients who have cataract surgery in public hospitals are less healthy than patients who have cataract surgery in private hospitals or clinics (see more in the next section).

Another study by Solborg Bjerrum et al. [ 48 ] in Denmark addressed the risk of postoperative endophthalmitis (PE) in public and private eye clinics or hospitals from 2004 to 2012. The results showed that PE risk is 0.36 per 1000 operations in public hospitals and 0.73 per 1000 operations in private hospitals. Further analysis of the clinics revealed that there is homogeneity in the PE risk among the eye departments in public hospitals ( p  = 0.6) but heterogeneity in the PE risk among the private hospitals or eye clinics ( p  = 0.0001). Six private hospitals or clinics (out of 28) had a statistically significantly higher PE risk compared with the eye departments in public hospitals.

The third study from Denmark concerned how ownership affects professional behavior, treatment quality and patient satisfaction. In a mixed-methods study, Bøgh Andersen and Jakobsen [ 16 ] found that private clinics optimize non-clinical factors, such as wait times, more than public providers. The clinical procedures in the clinics, however, were very similar, and private clinics did not achieve better clinical results. Patient satisfaction was still higher in private clinics. Thus, the general conclusion of the study was that although ownership seems to influence certain aspects of care, the high level of professionalization neutralizes the effect which can be seen in the clinical results.

Pérotin et al. [ 41 ] studied whether hospital ownership affects the level of quality reported by patients in areas other than clinical quality (information and interpersonal care, respect for privacy, dignity and hospitality and delays) in England. The authors found that results vary across specialties and patient groups. The sum of all ownership effects was not statistically significant which led the authors to conclude that hospital ownership does not seem to determine the level of quality of the average patient’s reported experience. The authors also stated that the differences in the quality levels between the private and public sectors are mostly attributable to patient characteristics, patient selection into public or private hospitals and unobserved and specific hospital characteristics, rather than to hospital ownership.

Sanjay et al. [ 44 ] studied patient selection criteria, anesthetic preferences and outcomes of elective inguinal hernia repair in public and private sectors in England. The authors found that the mean wait time for patients undergoing hernia repair is 129 days in the public sector (range 16–379 days) and 15 days (range 8–61 days; p  = 0.001) in the private sector. Caballer-Tarazona et al. [ 17 ] found some evidence that private ownership (PPP) seems to have a positive effect on some quality dimensions, such as access to care. In readmissions, Berta et al. [ 12 ] found that PNFP hospitals show the highest frequency of readmissions compared to public and PFP hospitals.

Sanjay et al.’s [ 44 ] results also showed differences in treatment practices: Anesthesia appears to be the preferred option in the private sector (52%) and local anesthesia in the public sector (66%; ( p  = 0.0002). After a follow-up at 6 months, there was a postal questionnaire survey regarding chronic groin pain and satisfaction rates. No statistically significant difference was noted in the incidence of post-operative complications, recurrence and groin pain and satisfaction rate between the patients treated in public or private facilities. Grilli et al. [ 27 ], in turn, found that ownership status and payment structure have a strong impact on the adoption and use of a new technology, drug-eluting stents. Public hospitals use drug-eluting stents more selectively than private hospitals targeting the new device at patients who have a high risk for adverse effects.

Grotle et al. [ 28 ] studied sociodemographic, lifestyle and clinical characteristics in patients who were operated for lumbar disc herniation in public and private clinics in Norway. The authors evaluated whether selection for surgery and surgical treatment differed between public and private clinics. The main results were that more patients operated in private clinics are sent home the same day of surgery, and a larger proportion of the patients receive prophylactic antibiotic treatment. There were also more complications in public clients compared to the private clinics. However, the patients treated in the private sector were different compared to the patients treated in the public clinics. This, again, may be the explanation behind the results. We turn to the discussion on patient selection in the following section.

Operational differences

Patient selection.

In terms of performance, it is relevant to assess whether hospitals engage in patient selection to reduce their risks and costs. In an unregulated competitive market, this may be a rational reaction, but it also creates a problematic bias in the results if the patient base varies significantly between public and private hospitals in individual studies.

Solborg Bjerrum et al. [ 47 ] found that patients treated in public and private settings are significantly different. The mean age at first eye cataract surgery decreased statistically significantly during the study period but significantly more so in patients operated in private hospitals or clinics than patients operated in public hospitals. Furthermore, the results of the mortality analyses indicated that patients who have cataract surgery in public hospitals are not as healthy as patients who have cataract surgery in private hospitals or clinics. Bøgh Andersen and Jakobsen [ 16 ] found that private hip replacement clinics have fewer complications than patients than public clinics.

Berta et al. [ 12 ] showed that private hospitals are involved in cream skimming at a much higher rate than public and not-for-profit hospitals. Sanjay et al. [ 44 ], in turn, found in England that patients undergoing surgery in the private sector are slightly younger compared to those treated in the public sector, that the number of patients with the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grading system grades III and IV is higher in the public sector (28.6%), and that there are a higher number of ASA I and II (83%) patients in the private sector.

In a study conducted in Italy, Grilli et al. [ 27 ] showed that patients in public hospitals are older and more likely to undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for indications such as acute myocardial infraction and unstable angina than patients in private hospitals. In addition, patients with stable angina are more prevalent in private hospitals than in public hospitals. Furthermore, patients with multivessel disease who undergo PCI with stenting are significantly more prevalent in public centers with and without open-heart surgical facilities than in private centers. Finally, the proportion of patients with high-risk lesions is higher in public hospitals than in private hospitals.

Grotle et al. [ 28 ] found that patients who have lumbar disc herniation surgery in a private clinic are somewhat younger (1.3 years), are more likely to be male, have higher education and are less likely to be unemployed. The proportion of patients who were on sick leave was somewhat higher in private clinics than in the public sector. However, the duration of sick leave before surgery was significantly higher. In the public sector, the mean duration was 24 weeks (SD = 36.4) whereas in the private sector it was around 15 weeks (SD = 20.7). Grotle and colleagues also found that the proportions of disability and retired pensioners are more than double in the public sector compared to that for private clinics. There were also higher proportions of patients who smoked and were obese (BMI > 30) in the public health services. Furthermore, public sector patients used more pain relief, had a longer duration of pain in the back and leg, and had more comorbidities, such as heart disease, hip osteoarthritis, depression and chronic lung diseases. There was also a higher ASA grade among patients operated in public hospitals.

In sum, the limited number of studies analyzing patient selection indicated that public hospitals tend to treat patients who are older and have lower socioeconomic status, riskier lifestyles and higher levels of co-morbidity and complications than patients treated in private hospitals.

Other operational dimensions

Other operational dimensions, such as differences in staff composition, skill level and working conditions, are very likely, but were not reported systematically in the studies included in this study sample. Berta et al. [ 12 ] analyzed effects of distortions (i.e., upcoding, cream skimming and readmissions) induced by the prospective payment system on hospitals’ technical efficiency in Italy. They found that PNFP and public hospitals have the same efficiency levels, while PFP hospitals have the lowest technical efficiency. This could be at least partially explained by the finding that private hospitals are more engaged with cream skimming which, in turn, was found to have a negative impact on hospitals’ technical efficiency. The role of the payment structure was also taken up by Augurzky et al. [ 4 ]. They found that public hospitals tend to exhibit PD at much higher levels than the hospitals in the sample did, on average. This could be explained by the public backing which affects hospital incentives to perform in a financially sustainable way (compare, e.g., [ 40 ]). Differences in financial incentives to hospitals of different ownership status were also brought up by Czypionka et al. [ 19 ] and Barbetta et al. [ 6 ], and both suggested that the different financial incentives are actually the key driver behind the different results in performance.

The study by Bøgh Andersen and Jakobsen [ 16 ] suggested that non-clinical practices, such as wait times, differ between public and private sectors, but in terms of clinical practices, organizations operate similarly. Kondilis et al. [ 37 ] found that PFP hospitals have lower bed capacity, lower occupancy rates and lower nurse staffing rates compared to public hospitals. Staffing rates were also discussed by Daidone and D’Amico [ 20 ] who found that PFP hospitals work in slightly over-staffed conditions for medical staff while public and especially PNFP hospitals are over-staffed by technical and administrative staff.

Numerous important theoretical contributions suggest that private hospitals should outperform public hospitals in terms of efficiency [ 19 , 31 , 52 ]. However, as we have seen, the empirical evidence from the regulated and mixed healthcare markets in Europe is much more diverse. Although many studies reported insignificant results, the majority of the remaining studies found that public hospitals perform better than PNFP providers, which, in turn, show slightly better performance than PFP hospitals in terms of efficiency measures (see Table 3 ). This result is in line with the conclusion in previous review studies, such as Hollingsworth [ 33 ] who summarized his findings as follows: “Cautious conclusions are that public provision may be potentially more efficient than private, in certain settings.” Tiemann et al. [ 50 ] concluded that in line with the evidence found in studies from other countries, especially the US, the evidence from Germany suggested that private ownership (i.e., PNFP and PFP) is not necessarily associated with higher efficiency compared to public ownership.

The last part of the Hollingsworth quote is important as it points to the discussion we launched in the introduction of this paper. Namely, that the context is important for understanding the results. Several studies discussed the specifics of the financing system, the contracting process and the degree of competition or monopoly in the market as important factors in determining the effects of ownership. In general terms, it appears likely that results are sensitive to specific circumstances and regulatory setup. Or as stated in one of the previous review studies,” [t]he true effect of ownership appears to depend on institutional context, including differences across regions, markets, and over time” [ 23 ].

Drawing on the theoretical contributions from the introduction, we speculate that variation in the results across countries and over time may be partially explained by differences in transaction costs, market structure and market maturity. High transaction costs may affect efficiency results for private providers more than for public providers, as administrative burdens may be internalized by public organizations. Market structure is a key issue as monopolies are likely to lead to lower efficiency, whether public or private. This means that diverging results across studies may be explained by underlying variations in market structure. Market maturity may also influence results across studies. As explained in the introduction, cost reductions tend to be highest in the first rounds of competitive bidding, while private and public agents adjust over time. Unfortunately, the studies did not report systematically on transaction costs, market structure or market maturity.

In terms of the ownership argument presented in the introduction, several countries operate with different types of private ownership, and PNFP organizations tend to do well in comparison with their PFP counterparts. The main explanations suggested in the studies point to the difference in profit orientation and the motivation of employees as key factors for explaining this. However, more research should be devoted to explaining these observations, based on the differences in the structure, operational practices and historical role of not-for-profits in specific institutional contexts.

Another theoretical point (usually not addressed clearly) in comparative public–private provider studies is that the political reasons for using private actors can vary significantly and that this is likely to have impact on the results. Contracting out can be done for purely ideological purposes. It may be done to save costs, to increase the service and quality or to boost a market and promote the development of private enterprise. This means that the use of private actors can be successful from some perspectives but not from others.

An important observation from the present review is that many studies that addressed the economic effects of ownership failed to account for quality and operational differences, such as patient selection, although this is potentially very important for the economic results. This represents an important barrier for cross-study comparison, as the tendencies regarding economic performance may be associated with different outcomes in different studies and contexts. An underlying reason for this observation is the challenge of measuring quality consistently. The literature distinguishes among input, process and outcome quality. Many studies focused on the two first dimensions as proxies for the overall quality, as it is easier to obtain data on these issues. However, the real test of benefits to patients lies in the outcome quality. There are extensive efforts to improve the collection of such data in many countries, but this effort has not yet been sufficiently integrated in efficiency studies.

In addition to the theoretically based explanations, there may be specific methodological explanations for the diverse results. Shen et al. [ 46 ] investigated such issues (also [ 23 ]. They found that variation in the direction and size of ownership effects can be explained by differences in research focus and methodology as described above.

Another methodological issue is that the number of studies and underlying cases included in this scoping review may be insufficient to show clear patterns. This argument is somewhat contradicted by the fact that this study can be seen as an extension of previous review studies, which also tended to show mixed results with a slight tendency to favor public and PNFP organizations as shown above.

Overall, it seems fair to conclude that contextual circumstances can be at least as important as ownership. Furthermore, that we need more systematic analysis of the dimensions of the context in order to find patterns in the relationship between contextual circumstances and performance for public and private providers.

This paper investigated whether there is evidence that private delivery organizations perform better than public delivery organizations in European healthcare systems. This topic was studied using a scoping review of the available evidence from recent studies conducted within the European region. We identified 24 studies that reported economic efficiency measures or quality in their comparison of hospital organizations with different ownership forms. The studies covered a wide range or European countries, including Austria, Germany, England, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Norway. The majority of the studies ( n  = 17) found in the database searches addressed the economic performance of public and private specialized care organizations. Seven studies addressed quality.

In terms of economic performance, most studies focused on technical efficiency using DEA or SFA techniques. Fifteen studies compared PUB hospitals to PFP hospitals. Some studies reported technical, cost and profit efficiency (see Table 3 ). About half of these studies reported that public hospitals are superior to PFP hospitals in efficiency. Most of the other studies found insignificant differences. Only one study reported that PFP hospitals have better profit efficiency. Eight studies compared the performance of PFP hospitals and PNFP hospitals. The majority of these studies found that PNFP hospitals are superior in terms of technical, cost and profit efficiency. Only one study pointed to responsiveness as a performance measure where PFP hospitals are better than PNFP hospitals. Finally, we found 11 studies compared PUB hospitals and PNFP hospitals. Most of these studies reported insignificant differences. In the remaining studies, we found slightly more studies presented PUB hospitals as superior to PNFP hospitals.

Summing up, our review of 17 studies representing more than 5500 hospitals across Europe showed that public hospitals are most frequently reported as having the best economic performance compared to PNFP and PFP hospitals. PNFP hospitals are second, while PFP hospitals are least frequently reported as superior. However, a sizeable number of studies did not find significant differences. In terms of quality, the results were mixed, and it is not possible to draw clear conclusions about the superiority of an ownership type. A few studies analyzed patient selection. They indicated that public hospitals tend to treat patients who are slightly older and have lower socioeconomic status, riskier lifestyles and higher levels of co-morbidity and complications than patients in private hospitals.

This scoping review pointed out shortcomings in the available studies, and future studies are needed to investigate the relationship between contextual circumstances and performance. A significant weakness in many studies was the failure to account for quality, patient selection and other operational dimensions, which may have influenced the results. This weakness should also be addressed in future comparative studies.

Abbreviations

Average length of stay

The American Society of Anesthesiologists

Body mass index

Corrected ordinary least squares

Data envelopment analysis

Diagnosis related group

Percutaneous coronary intervention

Probability of default

Private for-profit

Private not-for-profit

Public–private partnership

Randomized controlled trial

Standard deviation

Stochastic frontiers analysis

Social Health Insurance

Specialist treatment center

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the research group of the project Privatizing the health care sector: Expansion of voluntary, private health insurance and private for-profit hospitals in the Nordic countries funded by the Norwegian Research Council (Grant No. 238133).

The study was funded by the Norwegian Research Council (Grant No. 238133, Privatizing the health care sector: Expansion of voluntary, private health insurance and private for-profit hospitals in the Nordic countries). The funding body was not involved in the study.

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Tynkkynen, LK., Vrangbæk, K. Comparing public and private providers: a scoping review of hospital services in Europe. BMC Health Serv Res 18 , 141 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-2953-9

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Which perform better: public or private hospitals?

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Over the last few decades, numerous studies have analysed performance differences in the healthcare sector between public and private hospitals across the world.

When delivering healthcare services, can public hospitals outperform private ones? Or is it more likely the other way round?

A major argument in favour of the private sector providing public services is that it could increase service efficiency. But there is mixed evidence that confirms with certainty whether private organisations in the healthcare sector perform better than their counterparts. 

This opens up another question: if private organisations providing public services could lower costs and increase efficiency , what would happen to their public counterparts?   Earlier studies on privatisation tend to give a higher performance ranking to public services provided by privately-owned organisations, but this performance gap has attenuated over the last few years.

Although several studies demonstrate that publicly-owned hospitals in the United States are less efficient than those that are privately-owned, other findings challenge this logic and provide evidence that private hospitals are the ones that tend to be less efficient.   In Europe, several studies show different trends. In Belgium, for instance, publicly-owned hospitals are on average more efficient than their private counterparts. In Germany, some studies show a similar pattern, but others reveal that there are no significant differences in cost efficiency between public and privately-owned hospitals. 

In Asia, public hospitals experience higher costs per patient than those that are owned privately, while in Australia, there are no differences in costs between public and private hospitals.   To clear up these mixed results, we conducted research analysis across healthcare studies for the USA, Germany, Taiwan, Belgium, Spain and Italy using data from public and private hospitals.

In Belgium, publicly-owned hospitals are on average more efficient than their private counterparts

We compared the countries’ differences in both healthcare costs and performance levels . Our aim was to demonstrate whether public organisations in the healthcare sector performed better than private ones or vice versa. Our findings bring good news for public hospitals.

Financial costs and efficiency – who wins?

Some scholars have suggested that because public sector organisations operate without market pressures, they cannot benefit from the information the market provides to improve their performance . Instead, they rely on political will and budgetary changes: both aspects that can limit their production levels.    Regardless of this, our analysis shows a genuine effect in favour of public sector hospitals. We found evidence that the provision of health services is cheaper if provided by the public sector.

Indeed, public sector hospitals outperform their private counterparts when the goal is to reduce financial costs. This is good news for governments and taxpayers: public health services are cheaper and allow for better financial savings.

However, there is a secondary aspect where private hospitals are better: productive performance. The findings show that when technical efficiency is considered, the private sector performs better than its public counterparts.

Public sector hospitals outperform their private counterparts when the goal is to reduce financial costs

Performance differences between countries

When measuring healthcare performance by country, the findings showing that private hospitals tend to be more efficient do not hold for the United States and Germany.    All our estimations for the United States show better performance in public hospitals . Our analysis of German hospitals also finds a similar pattern: public hospitals in Germany tend to be more associated with better performance while private hospitals perform worse.   A possible explanation for these results can be found in the public sector’s performance levels by country published in the World Economic Forum’s Global competitiveness report. According to the report, Germany and the US rank similarly and are identified as having the best performing public sectors worldwide.    On the contrary, Taiwan, and particularly Belgium, Spain and Italy – the four remaining countries in our study – rank much worse in terms of public sector performance.    Our analysis demonstrates that comparing public and private performance requires a broader framework that includes several moderating factors that go beyond whether ownership is public or private. Only by developing further research on these additional factors will we be able to distinguish when and how private organisations could be a better option for delivering health services.

This article is based on joint research by Esade and the Research Institute of Applied Economics published in the International Public Management Journal.

Visiting professor, Department of Strategy and General Management at Esade Business School

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Division of General Internal Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

Affiliation Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliation Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, Weill Cornell Medical College/Rockefeller University/Sloan-Kettering Institute, New York, New York, United States of America

Affiliation Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliations Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom, Department of Sociology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom

• Sanjay Basu, 
• Jason Andrews, 
• Sandeep Kishore, 
• Rajesh Panjabi, 
• David Stuckler

• Published: June 19, 2012
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244
• Reader Comments

Introduction

Private sector healthcare delivery in low- and middle-income countries is sometimes argued to be more efficient, accountable, and sustainable than public sector delivery. Conversely, the public sector is often regarded as providing more equitable and evidence-based care. We performed a systematic review of research studies investigating the performance of private and public sector delivery in low- and middle-income countries.

Methods and Findings

Peer-reviewed studies including case studies, meta-analyses, reviews, and case-control analyses, as well as reports published by non-governmental organizations and international agencies, were systematically collected through large database searches, filtered through methodological inclusion criteria, and organized into six World Health Organization health system themes: accessibility and responsiveness; quality; outcomes; accountability, transparency, and regulation; fairness and equity; and efficiency. Of 1,178 potentially relevant unique citations, data were obtained from 102 articles describing studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries. Comparative cohort and cross-sectional studies suggested that providers in the private sector more frequently violated medical standards of practice and had poorer patient outcomes, but had greater reported timeliness and hospitality to patients. Reported efficiency tended to be lower in the private than in the public sector, resulting in part from perverse incentives for unnecessary testing and treatment. Public sector services experienced more limited availability of equipment, medications, and trained healthcare workers. When the definition of “private sector” included unlicensed and uncertified providers such as drug shop owners, most patients appeared to access care in the private sector; however, when unlicensed healthcare providers were excluded from the analysis, the majority of people accessed public sector care. “Competitive dynamics” for funding appeared between the two sectors, such that public funds and personnel were redirected to private sector development, followed by reductions in public sector service budgets and staff.

Conclusions

Studies evaluated in this systematic review do not support the claim that the private sector is usually more efficient, accountable, or medically effective than the public sector; however, the public sector appears frequently to lack timeliness and hospitality towards patients.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Citation: Basu S, Andrews J, Kishore S, Panjabi R, Stuckler D (2012) Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review. PLoS Med 9(6): e1001244. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244

Academic Editor: Rachel Jenkins, King's College London, United Kingdom

Received: January 18, 2012; Accepted: May 8, 2012; Published: June 19, 2012

Copyright: © 2012 Basu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: No direct funding was received for this study. The authors were personally salaried by their institutions during the period of writing (though no specific salary was set aside or given for the writing of this paper).

Competing interests: The authors have no competing financial interests. SB, JA, SK and RP are employed at academic medical centers, which receive public sector research finances but also receive revenue through private sector fee-for-service medical transactions and private foundation grants. RP serves on the board of a nonprofit organization (Tiyatien Health) that provides health services in Liberia with approval from and in collaboration with the government and through receipt of private foundation funding, but has received no compensation for this role. SB and JA serve on the board of a nonprofit organization (Nyaya Health) that provides health services in rural Nepal using funds received from both private foundations and the Nepali government; they have also not received compensation for these roles.

Abbreviations: C-section, cesarean section; WHO, World Health Organization

Editors' Summary

Health care can be provided through public and private providers. Public health care is usually provided by the government through national healthcare systems. Private health care can be provided through “for profit” hospitals and self-employed practitioners, and “not for profit” non-government providers, including faith-based organizations.

There is considerable ideological debate around whether low- and middle-income countries should strengthen public versus private healthcare services, but in reality, most low- and middle-income countries use both types of healthcare provision. Recently, as the global economic recession has put major constraints on government budgets—the major funding source for healthcare expenditures in most countries—disputes between the proponents of private and public systems have escalated, further fuelled by the recommendation of International Monetary Fund (an international finance institution) that countries increase the scope of private sector provision in health care as part of loan conditions to reduce government debt. However, critics of the private health sector believe that public healthcare provision is of most benefit to poor people and is the only way to achieve universal and equitable access to health care.

Why Was This Study Done?

Both sides of the public versus private healthcare debate draw on selected case reports to defend their viewpoints, but there is a widely held view that the private health system is more efficient than the public health system. Therefore, in order to inform policy, there is an urgent need for robust evidence to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of the health care provided through both systems. In this study, the authors reviewed all of the evidence in a systematic way to evaluate available data on public and private sector performance.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers used eight databases and a comprehensive key word search to identify and review appropriate published data and studies of private and public sector performance in low- and middle-income countries. They assessed selected studies against the World Health Organization's six essential themes of health systems—accessibility and responsiveness; quality; outcomes; accountability, transparency, and regulation; fairness and equity; and efficiency—and conducted a narrative review of each theme.

Out of the 102 relevant studies included in their comparative analysis, 59 studies were research studies and 13 involved meta-analysis, with the rest involving case reports or reviews. The researchers found that study findings varied considerably across countries studied (one-third of studies were conducted in Africa and a third in Southeast Asia) and by the methods used.

Financial barriers to care (such as user fees) were reported for both public and private systems. Although studies report that patients in the private sector experience better timeliness and hospitality, studies suggest that providers in the private sector more frequently violate accepted medical standards and have lower reported efficiency.

What Do These Findings Mean?

This systematic review did not support previous views that private sector delivery of health care in low- and middle-income settings is more efficient, accountable, or effective than public sector delivery. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses, but importantly, in both sectors, there were financial barriers to care, and each had poor accountability and transparency. This systematic review highlights a limited and poor-quality evidence base regarding the comparative performance of the two systems.

Additional Information

Please access these websites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244 .

• A previous PLoS Medicine study examined the outpatient care provided by the public and private sector in low-income countries
• The WHO website provides more information on healthcare systems
• The World Bank website provides information on health system financing
• Oxfam provides an argument against increased private health care in poor countries

One longstanding and polarized debate in global health concerns the appropriate role and balance of the public and private sector in providing healthcare services to populations in low- and middle-income countries [1] . In recent years, disputes between the proponents of private and public systems have become particularly heated, as the global economic recession that began in 2007 has placed major constraints on government budgets—the major funding source for healthcare expenditures in most countries ( Figure 1 ) [2] . The International Monetary Fund has recommended that countries increase the scope of private sector provision in health care as part of loan conditions [3] , often to reduce government debt [4] . Criticizing such efforts, the international nonprofit organization Oxfam, in its report “Blind Optimism,” concluded that “to achieve universal and equitable access to health care, the public sector must be made to work as the majority provider” [5] . The World Bank responded that it seeks “more pragmatic approaches that build on what is available” by engaging with the private sector in countries where public sector services perform poorly [6] ; the Center for Global Development similarly argued that the Oxfam report “ignored the informal sector,” and that poor people “want to go” to private providers and will “persist in doing so” [7] .

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n  = 190 countries for which data are available. Source: [114] .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244.g001

Generally, this debate has been divided between those seeking universal state-based healthcare availability and those advocating for the private sector to provide care in areas where the public sector has typically failed. Private sector advocates have pointed to evidence that the “private sector is the main provider,” as many impoverished patients prefer to seek care at private clinics [1] . They have suggested that the private sector may be more efficient and responsive to patient needs because of market competition, which they indicate should overcome government inefficiency and corruption [8] . In contrast, public sector advocates have highlighted inequities in access to health care resulting from the inability of the poor to pay for private services. They have noted that private markets often fail to deliver public health goods including preventative services (a “market failure”), and lack coordinated planning with public health systems, required to curb epidemics.

Both sides claim their critics are “ideologically biased” [9] , [10] and selectively draw on case reports to defend their viewpoints [5] , [7] . However, significant conflicts of interest may apply to both groups [11] , as large private international contractors, insurance firms, and non-governmental organizations may benefit from expanding the role of the private sector, while academics who rely on state-funded grant proposals may gain resources from a greater public sector role.

Crucially needed to inform this debate is a systematic review of existing evidence. As Hanson and colleagues note, “A strengthened evidence base on the performance of the public and private health sectors is essential to guide decision-makers towards policy choices that are appropriate for their contexts” [11] . However, in practice, studies comparing the performance of private and public sectors are difficult to implement, for several reasons. First, healthcare services are not universally dichotomized between public and private providers, as some practitioners participate in both state-based and privately owned healthcare delivery systems, and many systems are dually funded or informal. A wide range of arrangements exist for how such expenditures are spent in public versus private clinics, hospitals, and informal settings (see Box 1 for definitions). One example of this complication is the role of informal payments in public facilities. These private–public interactions confound a simplistic comparison between private and public systems. Second, state-based healthcare services and private services have coexisted in many low- and middle-income countries for decades; most countries have a large fraction (but not all) of healthcare expenditures paid for by the state, with most of the remainder paid for by households [12] . In this context, simply defining what is private or public is not straightforward. Private providers are heterogeneous, consisting of formal for-profit entities such as independent hospitals, informal entities that may include unlicensed providers, and nonprofit and non-governmental organizations.

Box 1. Different Public and Private Healthcare Delivery Agents in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Multinational and national for-profit corporations: for-profit group practices, sometimes associated with hospitals.

Formal individual private providers: individual physicians or other healthcare providers operating in smaller scale healthcare facilities or private pharmacies.

Informal for-profit providers: unlicensed, unregulated providers including shop owners, “injectors,” traditional healers, and birth attendants.

Not-for-profit providers: civil society, non-governmental, and faith-based groups, charities; and community and social enterprises, with varying degrees of regulation and oversight.

Public hospitals, health centers, and clinics: county- and district-level hospitals and clinics, with varying degrees of accessibility and user fees for patients, often having providers that also participate in private sector healthcare delivery.

Public–private partnerships: International or national associations that have varying degrees of for-profit or nonprofit status, or collaborations between for-profit and government/nonprofit entities to deliver services. Also have varying user fees for patients and varying levels of public subsidization for delivering healthcare services.

Although these debates have been highly visible, there is a dearth of reviews on the topic. An initial search of prior systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the PubMed database revealed one recent review, evaluating 80 field-based studies that directly and simultaneously compared service quality in ambulatory public and private care clinics [1] . The analysis found that private outpatient clinics often had better drug supplies and responsiveness than public clinics, but the analysis did not assess other dimensions of health system performance (such as accessibility). The review excluded studies of hospitals, case reports, intervention studies (such as how a sector responded to quality improvement programs), or statistical studies of population-level data.

The aim of the current study is to evaluate available data on public and private sector performance across the key domains of health systems competencies. Our goal is to understand how the private or public nature of a given healthcare delivery institution may impact core healthcare delivery goals. We systematically review published data and studies of private and public sector performance in low- and middle-income countries against six health systems themes used by World Health Organization (WHO), adapted from the 2000 World Health Report [13] . The six themes are as follows: accessibility and responsiveness; quality; outcomes; accountability, transparency, and regulation; fairness and equity; and efficiency [13] ( Table 1 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244.t001

Search Strategy

We searched for primary literature in eight major databases using the indexed and free-text terms “private sector,” “privatization,” “public-private sector partnerships,” and “public sector” in various combinations, as described in Text S1 . Because much of the discussion and data collection on this topic has been performed outside of academic circles by international agencies and non-governmental groups, we supplemented the database search by conducting the same keyword searches on the websites of the WHO library database WHOLIS, the World Bank Documents and Reports repository, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Program, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Oxfam International, and the Kaiser Family Foundation Global Health Division. The search terms included studies in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or Russian, published from 1 January 1980 through 31 August 2011.

Study Selection

All titles and abstracts found by the search strategy were filtered for relevance to the study objective. Studies must have included data on a population in at least one low- or middle-income country, defined by the 2010 World Bank criteria of having current per-capita gross national income less than or equal to US$12,275 [14] . The full texts of potentially relevant articles were subject to the inclusion criteria listed in Table 2 to ensure they met basic minimum methodological standards. Qualitative studies were included if they specified a systematic methodology for interviews, focus group analysis, historical or political science analysis, or ethnographic observation (see Text S2 for the PRISMA checklist).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244.t002

Data Extraction and Analysis

A data extraction method was designed by three reviewers (S. B., J. A., and D. S.). J. A. extracted the data using a preestablished standard data entry format into a database, with verification by S. B. to ensure consistency of coding. Standard data describing each study were also extracted, including the country where the study was performed, study period, study methodology, number of included participants, primary and secondary outcome measures and end points, and study limitations. Where disclosed, we noted the study funders and agencies. Disagreements between the two reviewers were resolved by consensus among all authors.

The data synthesis was structured into six themes from the updated WHO framework for health system assessment (see Table 1 for themes, subthemes, and indicators used to assess each theme) [13] . Relevant data that did not fall into one of these themes was separately included in the analysis in an “other factors” category that is discussed following the principal results. Reports containing information relevant to more than one theme were included in all related thematic areas. We did not perform further subanalysis of the highest quality studies as the authors could not agree to a vote-counting approach that would apply across the quantitative and qualitative methods and the six WHO themes captured in literature using different types of outcome variables.

The study selection process is shown in Figure 2 as a PRISMA flow diagram. Of the 1,178 potentially relevant unique citations from all literature searches, 102 studies met the inclusion criteria. Key characteristics of the included studies are summarized in Table 3 . Fifty-nine studies were empirical research studies and 13 involved meta-analysis, with the rest involving case reports or reviews. One-third of studies were carried out in the WHO-defined African region ( n  = 32) and another third in the Southeast Asian region ( n  = 34); most were published after 1990. We found that about nine out of ten studies directly compared quality of care in public versus private systems or assessed the demand for or utilization of services; the remaining studies examined drug availability or affordability or compared the cost and efficiency of services.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244.g002

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244.t003

Theme 1. Accessibility and Responsiveness

Six articles documented that a significant proportion of outpatient services in low- and middle-income countries appeared to be provided by the private sector [15] – [18] . However, the percentage of total visits varied substantially across countries and income levels [15] . In Viet Nam, the private sector provides 60% of all outpatient contacts. In India, more than 90% of children affected by diarrhea are taken to private healthcare providers, but the income gradient was not specified among studies reporting this data [17] . Among participants surveyed for HIV testing in 12 African countries, the proportion of patients using the private sector for testing ranged from 3% to 45% [19] .

Several studies disaggregated utilization by income levels, tending to find that the private sector predominantly serves more affluent populations. A widely cited study on access of the private and public sectors was performed by the World Bank in 22 low- and middle-income countries using Demographic and Health Surveys [20] . Although interpretation of the findings varies [5] , [20] , the analysis found that in 19 of the countries studied, both wealthy and poor families received more care from the private than the public sector, but only when the private sector included private drug shops and similar informal providers [21] ; when the composition of the private sector was limited to only licensed and certified healthcare personnel, the public sector provided the majority of care in low- and middle-income countries. However, there were three exceptions: Namibia, Tanzania, and Zambia, where private sectors are majority providers even when only licensed personnel are counted. The percentage of visits to the private sector was lower among the poor than among the wealthy in these surveys, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Additionally, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where the private sector provided more than a quarter of all childhood immunizations overall, among the wealthiest quartile it provided 72% of immunizations but among the poorest quartile it provided only 3% [16] . In Uganda, 17.4% of women use private clinics or midwives for their family-planning-related medical care due to short distances and low transport costs, according to interviews conducted among 10,706 women, of whom 57% were in the country's lowest wealth quintile [18] .

Few studies have investigated “accessibility” per se (i.e., the ability to access available services). However, wait times were consistently found to be shorter in private sector than in public sector facilities [22] , [23] . One interview-based study in Ghana suggested that waiting times among public sector facilities could be longer for the same condition than private sector facilities by one or two hours [22] . Women living in rural Nigeria also reported preferring private obstetric services to public services because doctors were more frequently present at the time of patient presentation [23] .

Patients tended to report worse hospitality from providers at public than private facilities (13 studies) [24] – [36] . In Bangladesh, for example, public providers ranked lower than private providers on scale-based surveys in which patients assessed the diagnostic explanation given them, courtesy of staff, cleanliness of facilities, capacity building, and the availability of certain medical inputs [36] . A study in India found that patients were seen for longer durations, were more likely to have a physical exam during their visit, and were more likely to have their diagnosis explained to them by private sector physicians than public sector ones [33] . Analysis in several countries suggested that patients in private sector facilities reported preferring the facilities because of shorter waiting periods, longer or more flexible opening hours, and better availability of staff [34] .

Theme 2. Quality of Health Care

Nine retrospective chart reviews and survey-based studies found that diagnostic accuracy and adherence to medical management standards were worse among private than public sector care providers [37] – [45] . Most of these studies examined infectious disease management protocols, including for tuberculosis and malaria [46] . Private practitioners had significantly worse knowledge of correct diagnosis and treatment. Other disease categories showed similar patterns of lower quality in the private sector. In Nigeria, public providers were significantly more likely to use rapid malaria diagnostics and to use the recommended combination therapies than private providers [47] .

Similar poor adherence to guidelines in prescription practices, including subtherapeutic dosing, by private sector providers has been associated with a rise in drug-resistant malaria in Nigeria [47] . Parallel results were reported from Viet Nam [48] . In an analysis of outcome data from 24 countries, children with diarrhea were found to be less likely to receive appropriate oral rehydration salts and more likely to receive unnecessary antibiotics when seeing private providers than when seeing public providers [49] . However, a study of 119 private and ten public health clinics in Uganda found that both private and public providers prescribed antibiotics incorrectly (including not prescribing them when indicated), and in this study public providers were worse in adhering to national malaria treatment standards (14% versus 27%, p  = 0.002) [45] .

Poor adherence to guidelines in prescription practices, including prescribing subtherapeutic doses, failure to provide oral rehydration salts, and prescribing of unnecessary antibiotics were more likely to occur among private than public providers [47] – [49] , although there were exceptions [45] . Higher rates of potentially unnecessary procedures, particularly cesarean sections (C-sections), were also reported at private than at public settings [50] , [51] . One analysis of the Peruvian health system found significantly higher rates of C-sections after the privatization of delivery. The pre-reform rates in the private sector were already higher than the WHO recommended rate of 10%–15%; after reform, the rate exceeded 50%. The same has been found in South Africa, where 62% of women delivering in the private sector had C-sections, compared with 18% in the public sector [51] . Studies in Mexico suggested that fee-for-service payment structures (which are more heavily present in private than in public care delivery settings) incentivized increased C-sections [23] .

Two cross-sectional studies documented a lack of drug availability and service provision at public facilities. A semi-structured questionnaire distributed to 24 health secretariats and directors of 39 city hospitals and 26 referral and teaching hospitals revealed that 76% of state facilities and 67% of city facilities lacked assisted reproductive technologies that were widely available in private sector facilities (though the exact percentage among such private facilities was not evaluated) [52] . In Tanzania, a semi-structured questionnaire distributed to 80 randomly selected patients and 45 health facility personnel staff working in diabetic clinics found that private facilities tend to stock more types of oral hypoglycemic agents than public facilities [53] . However, studies did not make clear whether the additional types of drugs were related to better outcomes or were simply additional brands of equivalent medication on hand.

Some studies of quality of care were performed in the private sector without having a comparative public sector group. Two studies in South Africa found that the majority of private general practitioners were not aware of the recommended medications, doses, or durations for treatment of sexually transmitted infections [54] , [55] . Reviews in Nigeria and Laos reported similarly widespread use of ineffective therapies for malaria in the private sector [56] , [57] . Sexually transmitted disease management in private clinics and drugs shops in Uganda revealed that 93% of cases were not properly managed per national guidelines, and the cure rate was 47% [58] .

Dispensation of unnecessary medications and procedures was also reported to be higher among private sector providers according to four reports based on chart reviews. The most common incidents involved the unnecessary use of antibiotics for treatment of diarrheal diseases and non-complicated acute respiratory infections [32] , [49] . Reports from Africa and Laos suggest ineffective and sometimes harmful pharmaceuticals are being distributed in the private sector [56] , [57] .

Surveys of patients' perceptions of care quality were mixed. While two survey-based studies suggested that patients perceived higher quality among private practitioners, possibly due to frequent prescribing of medications and more time spent with patients [20] , [34] , three interview-based studies suggested that patients perceived public sector healthcare workers as more competent [32] , [59] , [60] .

Theme 3. Patient Outcomes

Public sector provision was associated with higher rates of treatment success for tuberculosis and HIV [61] – [64] as well as vaccination [65] , [66] . For example, in Pakistan, a matched cohort study in Karachi found that public sector tuberculosis care resulted in an 85% higher treatment success rate than private sector care [63] . In Thailand, patients seeking care in private institutions had significantly lower treatment success rates for tuberculosis, which was attributed to a three to five times greater likelihood of being prescribed non-WHO-recommended regimens than in the public sector [61] . In South Korea, tuberculosis treatment success rates were 51.8% in private clinics as opposed to 79.7% in public clinics, with only 26.2% of patients in private clinics receiving the recommended therapy, and over 40% receiving an inappropriately short duration of therapy [62] . Similarly higher rates of treatment failure were observed for private than public system patients on antiretroviral therapy for HIV in Botswana [64] . In India, an analysis of over 120,000 households, adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic factors, found that children receiving private health services were less likely to receive measles vaccinations [65] . Similar findings were reported from Cambodia [66] .

Studies comparing pre- and post-privatization outcomes tended to find worse health system performance associated with rapid and extensive healthcare privatization initiatives. In Colombia, following major privatization reforms in 1993, population vaccine coverage declined for several diseases in the country, and tuberculosis incidence rose significantly [67] . In Brazil, privatization of fertility control services led to increased abortions, sterilization, and improper use of oral contraceptives (obtained without medical consultation), ultimately linked to higher mortality rates among young women [68] . However, a slower pace of privatization of health care services did not appear to correlate with a substantial worsening in patient outcomes among Latin American countries [69] .

Theme 4. Accountability, Transparency, and Regulation

Data on this theme tended to be unavailable from the private sector. No papers were found to describe any systematic collection of outcome data from entirely private sector sources. One recent independent review of Ghana's private sector referred to the private sector as a “black box,” with a dearth of information on delivery practices and outcomes [22] . Tuberculosis and malaria case notification to the public health system was particularly poor among private sector providers as compared to public providers in a number of countries [28] , [48] , [70] . However, while national vital statistics databases collected from public sector clinics and hospitals were widely available, they varied considerably in quality according to external assessments [22] , [71] .

Public–private partnerships also lacked data. A systematic review of data from public–private partnerships (including arrangements among governments and private, for-profit contractors) found few reported data that were of sufficient quality to assess the impact of partnership services and programs [72] . Poor data availability was observed in another systematic collection from several countries' private–public partnerships for sexual and reproductive health services. Most data available showed that after brief training of health providers, provider responses to questionnaires improved in accuracy, but no assessments were made of health outcomes [71] . An exception was a partnership in India that demonstrated increased birth attendant coverage from 27% to 53% over 7 mo among a cohort of 97,000 women [73] .

Several reports observed significant public spending being used to regulate the private sector in order to improve patient care quality, particularly in African countries, and with limited effectiveness [22] , [74] – [76] . The effectiveness of these regulations of the private sector was found to vary, often depending on public monitoring and enforcement [17] , [34] , [77] . Regulations to reduce the sale of unnecessary breast milk substitutes by private drug shops in Laos had limited impact until government inspectors visited sites to ensure appropriate sales and provided sanctions for legal violations [17] . In Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, and Bihar, clinical education programs to improve distribution of oral rehydration salts and reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing were found to have a greater impact when patients also received education, and when community healthcare workers were involved in monitoring, than when education was given only to clinicians [17] . Reviews in Zimbabwe and Tanzania identified anti-competitive practices and sales of inappropriate drugs [75] ; attempted regulations in Zimbabwe were ineffective [76] . One review in Ghana indicated that the key public agency in charge of such regulation was unable to identify a large number of private providers in order to assess accreditation and quality: 2,612 of 11,430 drug shops were registered but had not received licenses [22] . A private–public partnership in South Africa to educate providers about national guidelines for sexually transmitted disease prevention and control had no effect on practice [77] . In Egypt a comparative assessment of clinical education programs found greater improvements in public sector practices than private sector practices [34] .

Theme 5. Fairness and Equity

Financial barriers to care, particularly user fees, were reported to be prevalent in both private and public systems. A World Bank study in Ghana concluded that there was no systematic evidence indicating whether user fees in the public sector were different than in the private sector [78] ; however, the data presented showed that out-of-pocket user fees for patients were highest for private not-for-profit, lowest for public, and intermediate for private self-financed providers [22] . Hence, the conclusions of the report appear to be disputed by the data within the report.

As noted in the preceding sections, private sector health services tend to cater more greatly to groups with higher income and fewer medical needs (an illustration of the “inverse care law”), resulting in disparities in coverage [35] , [79] – [85] , although findings varied in several cases [86] , [87] . Some studies suggested there was a systematic bias against indigent patients in terms of both quality and access. Exclusion of poor patients by the private sector was observed in South Africa [80] and Paraguay [81] . Poor patients were as likely as wealthier patients to seek care from private providers in Laos, but poorer patients received service from less qualified providers, with limited-quality services (no exam or advice, only medication dispensing) [35] . While most reports described income-based stratification in access, one report described stratification based on gender in addition to income. A nationally representative, cross-sectional, cluster-sample survey of 7,308 children in randomly selected rural and urban populations across Bangladesh observed that over 90% were taken to the private sector. However, when patients arrived at private clinics, children from higher income households and male children were significantly more often ( p <0.001) directed to a licensed provider and treated with oral rehydration solution or an antibiotic than female or poor children [85] .

Several studies suggested that the process of privatizing existing public services increased inequalities in the distribution of services. Analyses of the Tanzanian and Chilean health systems found that privatization led to many clinics being built in areas with less need, whereas prior to privatization government clinics had opened in underserved areas and made greater improvements in expanding population coverage of health services [82] – [84] . Privatization in China was statistically related to a rise in out-of-pocket expenditures, such that by 2001, half of Chinese surveyed reported that they had forgone health care in the previous year due to costs; out-of-pocket expenses accounted for 58% of healthcare spending in 2002 compared with 20% in 1978 when privatization began. The cost burdens of privatization related to an increase in disparities in healthcare coverage and infant mortality between urban and rural areas [79] . One survey-based study using Demographic Health Survey data from 34 sub-Saharan African countries found that privatization was associated with increased access, and reduced disparities in access between rich and poor [86] . A second analysis of the same dataset, however, found no change in inequality in use of modern contraceptives with the expansion of the private sector [87] .

Private contracting and social franchises showed potential for expanding private sector coverage to impoverished groups, although conclusions are tentative because comparisons to the public sector were unavailable. One World Bank study in Cambodia reported improvements in healthcare coverage in poor districts after contracting out services to private companies specifically to increase coverage. When contracts explicitly included targets for reaching the poor, contractors improved health services for the most marginalized groups, although comparison was not made to the results of a similar investment in public sector services [88] . Several related World Bank initiatives took the form of social franchises, in which private providers pay a fee and are provided training, managerial assistance, and certification in a provider network [20] , [89] , [90] . Several case studies of social franchises [20] , [89] , [90] found higher care utilization among the lower socioeconomic groups of private franchisers than of control private clinics for contraceptive use, HIV counseling, antenatal care, and vaccination [17] , [91] , [92] .

Theme 6. Efficiency

Several reports observed higher prescription drug costs in the private sector for equivalent clinical diagnoses [33] , [36] , [53] , [67] , [93] – [96] . In a survey study of prescription costs in India, costs were higher for every class of visit in the private sector [33] . Two-thirds of outpatients in the private sector, compared with one-third in the public sector, received an injection for similar presentations, but the study did not investigate what fraction was unnecessary [33] .

Both generic and brand-name drugs were found to be higher in price in the private sector [96] . Tanzanian private facilities typically used more brand-name oral hypoglycemic agents, but even generic medications were five times higher in price [53] . Similar findings were reported in India [96] . A study in Bangladesh found that private sector healthcare prices in the country—not just those associated with medications—have been growing far above the inflation rate [36] .

There is also evidence that the process of privatization is associated with increased drug costs [36] , [53] , [67] , [93] , [94] , [96] . A study of the Malaysian health system found that increasing privatization of health services was associated with increased medicine prices and decreased stability of prices [93] . Healthcare costs in Colombia rose significantly following privatization reform in 1993, and 52% of capitation fees were spent on administration [67] . Similar privatization in some parts of South Africa were associated with a 13% to 32% cost increase in overall health spending, without associated increases in coverage or indications [94] ; costs of prescriptions were significantly lower in the public sector, likely due to generic substitution, prepackaging of medications, and use of treatment protocols [95] .

Higher drug costs are in part associated with disease complications attributable to delayed diagnosis or incorrect disease management [97] , [98] . In Bolivia, seeking care in the private sector was associated with longer delays in tuberculosis diagnosis and greater costs [97] , [98] . It was estimated that in Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa, unnecessary C-sections increased delivery-related health costs in the private sector by at least 10-fold [23] . In Bangladesh, private contracting of health services appeared to increase costs related to complications and delays in service access [36] .

Several World Bank studies found significant fragmentation in purchasing and distribution across and within the public and private sectors, resulting in higher drug prices and redundant treatments that increase overall healthcare costs [22] , [99] . The absence of reliable distributors for pharmaceuticals in a study in Ghana led to several intermediary groups being used to distribute medications, increasing prices between 5% and 200% [22] . The large number of small-scale hospitals and clinics in some sub-Saharan African countries fragmented delivery, such that patient diagnoses and treatment histories were unavailable between institutions [22] , [99] , often significantly delaying care, and resulting in redundant tests and sometimes administration of incorrect medication to patients. Several private primary care providers reported difficulties referring their patients to public sector secondary care facilities, as public facilities did not accept the diagnoses made by the private providers and often required the patient to restart the consultation process [99] .

Competition between public and private delivery tended to decrease drug prices. One large multilevel analysis of the content and cost of 700 medication transactions observed in 14 private and public settings in Mali revealed that private providers were more likely to prescribe brand-name drugs, injectable drugs, and more antibiotics; however, the availability of drugs in the public sector decreased prices in the private sector [100] .

Contracting of public healthcare services to private providers has also been estimated by the World Bank to reduce costs of and waiting times for contracted services [36] , [101] , although the effects of contracting differ markedly by the type of healthcare service and across countries [17] , [102] . In Cambodia, contracted districts had costs of $22.7 per person per year versus $26.4 among non-contracted districts, although there were no tests of statistical significance [36] . One highly cited secondary analysis reported this outcome as a 17% savings resulting from contracting [101] . Peer-reviewed studies of contracting in Zimbabwe and South Africa found that costs were unchanged by contracting in South Africa but were lower after contracting in Zimbabwe [17] . One review of contracting experience in Madagascar and Senegal found that large expenditure from public sector ministries was necessary to manage and supervise private contracts, increasing overall costs in those two countries by 13% and 17%, respectively [102] .

Other Observed Factors

A few key findings reported in articles did not clearly fit into the WHO health system themes, mainly involving recent reports of complex “competitive dynamics” between private and public health sectors. First, a “crowding out” effect appeared to occur between private and public sector services for expanding delivery. This process involved the transfer of public funds and personnel to private sector development, followed by reductions in public sector service budgets and staff availability. In Ghana, new private services in urban middle- and upper-socioeconomic populations were found to reduce revenues for public sector hospitals that also provided care to poorer populations [22] . At times, however, the process was a passive privatization: public sector funds were increasingly allocated to private–public partnerships without accompanying shifts in demand, so that the public sector's effective budget per patient was reduced. This dynamic was observed in post-apartheid South Africa [103] , as well as in Uganda [104] and Brazil [105] . Public–private partnerships and private contractors were often involved in such scenarios, but did not typically disclose the data necessary to fully evaluate these arrangements.

Public and private sector interactions also had implications for delivery, staffing, and disease control. Interviews of Indian patients suggested that several private practitioners who work in both public and private sectors advised patients to visit their private clinics or requested further payments in order to continue providing care in the public clinic [106] . Doctors tended to migrate towards private sector and urban jobs, depriving the public sector and rural areas of physicians [107] . However, private hospital systems often subsidize or provide healthcare technologies to patients who cannot obtain these services from public hospitals. For example, in Botswana, private hospitals often receive cancer patients from public hospitals that are unable to provide radiation oncology services [78] . In some cases, however, the services in differing sectors undermined performance of one or both sectors. Several studies found that poor reporting of diseases in the private sector impeded public sector control of communicable diseases [28] , [48] , [70] .

Our systematic review of comparative analyses of public and private healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries found strengths and limitations in both sectors for each of six main WHO health systems framework themes. Private sector healthcare systems tended to lack published data by which to evaluate their performance, had greater risks of low-quality care, and served higher socio-economic groups, whereas the public sector tended to be less responsive to patients and lacked availability of supplies. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, the private sector appeared to have lower efficiency than the public sector, resulting from higher drug costs, perverse incentives for unnecessary testing and treatment, greater risks of complications, and weak regulation. Both public and private sector systems had poor accountability and transparency. Within all WHO health system themes, study findings varied considerably across countries and by the methods employed.

The review has several limitations, which reflect the existing data and literature purporting to compare the healthcare performance of public and private sectors. First, existing studies have focused on isolated topics where data are more abundant, and as a result have overlooked important dimensions of health sector performance. To address this limitation, we drew on a broader range of data, including reports from non-governmental organizations and international agencies like the World Bank. This step was particularly important for acquiring data from the private sector, since such data are relatively unavailable in the peer-reviewed academic literature. Thus, some studies included were not peer-reviewed. Our review involved a detailed analysis of methodological criteria for these studies to ensure they met similar standards of data analysis and reporting as peer-reviewed research. Second, although it was not possible to perform a quantitative meta-analysis because of variations in coding and outcomes, we were able to identify unsubstantiated claims in several cases, which appeared more prominent among non-peer reviewed sources. For example, the World Bank has made strong claims that investing in public–private partnerships will improve efficiency and effectiveness in the health sector [108] , yet several of its publications revealed that these assertions were either unsupported by data or the data was not provided in sufficient detail to pass minimal inclusion criteria required for this review [20] , [78] . Efforts are needed to address potential conflicts of interest of such agencies and their implications for research and data reporting, particularly as their analyses are often very highly cited in the academic literature on health system assessment and performance.

Third, our reliance of the WHO health system themes enabled the analysis to address systematically and comprehensively the existing research on public and private sectors. However, a limitation of the thematic framework, for example, is that several elements of the patient experience in healthcare settings, such as waiting times, are not systematically cataloged in current assessments. This implies that future research in the area should include a focus on how experiential aspects of care are relevant to healthcare seeking and outcomes (such as the likelihood of follow-up among patients requiring return visits) for differently structured care environments. Fourth, the review identified mixed results in several cases and was unable to account for a range of potential modifying factors, partly as a limitation of the broad WHO health system components that do not incorporate contextual factors. For example, treatment of infectious diseases in public settings may be more efficient than in private settings because of higher volume, and greater use of systematized protocols due to that higher volume. Such differences limit the ability of existing work to compare fairly the public and private sector for differing disease categories and in differing social and economic contexts of healthcare delivery.

Although it was not the focus of our research, we observed that some of our findings in low- and middle-income countries mirrored existing evidence from high-income countries. For example, the lack of data from private sector groups was similar to the situation in the UK, where the privately run Independent Sector Treatment Centres was unable to provide healthcare performance data when required [109] . However, our evidence also indicates that contextual factors modify the relationships we have observed, so that it is not straightforward to transpose health system evidence from high-income countries to low- and middle-income countries. Importantly, we observed that regulatory conditions interact with the effectiveness of public and private sector provision, but in low- and middle-income countries regulatory capacity is much weaker. As one example, the reviewed data suggest that systems that incentivize more procedures (rather than better outcomes) tend to lead to inefficiencies and poorer health outcomes. One extensively studied alternative system in high-income countries is pay-for-performance remuneration systems. It remains unclear what effects such programs may have in low- and middle-income countries as compared to high-income countries.

Our study has important implications for future research and policy. Future research is needed to address several important methodological limitations of existing studies. Many analyses were excluded from the review because they lacked a systematic approach to cataloging health system quality. Ideally, analyses should be comparative and should include a “counterfactual” in order to make causal claims about the effects of the particular benefits of providing services in one sector or the other. For example, social franchising to engage private providers in an organized regulatory system, which has been extensively piloted, has yet to be analyzed over the long term using outcome data and a comparison with commensurate investment in public sector development [88] . Studies also need to specify carefully the definition of the private and public sectors. When the private sector included unlicensed physicians, it was found to provide the majority of coverage for low-income groups, but when only licensed providers were included, the public sector was found to be the main source of healthcare provision in low- and middle-income countries. While some commentators report a higher number of absolute healthcare workers in the private sector, and a higher number of visits among the population to the private sector, these observation may be artifacts of improperly coding a large portion of private “providers” who are not actually qualified healthcare personnel, but rather drug store salespeople [1] , [5] . Most studies fail to capture the full scope of effects of reforms on the healthcare system, focusing on an isolated health system component. A reform may enhance public sector performance but compromise the market in the private sector, or vice versa. Standards may need to be developed for health system research for identifying what is “safe” and “effective” overall for patients across socioeconomic strata, just as we do for pharmaceutical safety and efficacy.

Some authors have highlighted the lack of regulatory infrastructure available in low- and middle-income countries to monitor the performance of private healthcare contractors [110] . Despite the lack of data about private sector performance, recent initiatives by the World Bank's International Finance Committee are underwriting the expansion of private sector services among low- and middle-income countries. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, the International Finance Committee has created a private equity fund to make 30 long-term investments in private health companies. These conflicts of interest pose a potential threat to the validity of World Bank–sponsored studies and raise the need for independent scrutiny.

Our review indicates that current data do not support claims that the private sector has been more efficient, accountable, or medically effective than the public sector [8] . The review also identifies several areas of focus for quality improvement. In the private sector, benefits may accrue from enhancing medical knowledge for appropriate diagnosis and disease management, drawing on specific quality improvement programs for continuing medical education that may serve as models [17] . It is also important to address conflicts of interest from physician-induced demand, particularly when prescribers are also drug store owners. Regulation and consumer education have been more successful than a reliance on clinical education alone in Pakistan and Bihar [17] . In the public sector, quality improvement may need to address incentives to perform at high standards among providers who may not feel threatened by a lack of business in the manner that private practitioners do. One proposed approach is to link provider compensation with results from patient outcomes, weighted by baseline disease risk in the patient population [111] . More generally, policy research needs to determine how targeted interventions might address these core weaknesses among both private and public delivery environments, including the lack of disclosure of outcome and performance data; as a measure of accountability, public transparency can be considered a vital sign of system performance (particularly for those systems receiving public subsidies; [112] ). While there is no clear definition of a “basic minimum dataset” for countries to capture health sector performance, we did notice several common themes in our data review. In many of the countries studied, surveillance of disease treatment outcomes among adults, and particularly noncommunicable disease, was found to be limited. Furthermore, we found further data gaps in health system performance around the issues of waiting times, financing changes (e.g., to further characterize the “competitive dynamics” we described), and outcomes of quality improvement efforts within each sector.

A critical challenge in years to come is how to address competitive dynamics between private and public realms, so that public sector facilities are not stripped of resources that are given to the private sector as subsidies, and so that the ability of public clinics and hospitals to retain skilled healthcare workers is not compromised, especially as both types of systems attempt to coexist in the healthcare delivery environment of low- and middle-income countries. These findings are consistent with earlier findings of an “infrastructure inequality trap” in some countries [103] , in which government funding is increasingly attracted towards private hospitals and away from the public sector hospitals. This occurs when private patients can afford to pay for greater infrastructure at private hospitals. Those hospitals then report greater “absorptive capacity” for future funds, and higher numbers of healthcare personnel, thereby attracting more funding from government institutions, shifting budgets away from public sector facilities that struggle to maintain human and physical infrastructure. Furthermore, we found evidence that many public–private initiatives involve public sector funding being dedicated to monitoring and preventing corruption in the private sector.

Overall, the data describing the performance of public and private systems remains highly limited and poor in quality, suggesting that further investigations should more systematically make data available to track the performance of both public and private care systems before further judgments are made concerning their relative merits and risks.

Supporting Information

Search strategy.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244.s001

PRISMA checklist.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244.s002

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SB JA DS RP. Performed the experiments: SB JA. Analyzed the data: SB JA. Wrote the first draft of the manuscript: SB JA DS. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: SB JA DS SK RP. ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: SB JA DS SK RP. Agree with manuscript results and conclusions: SB JA DS SK RP.

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Health Care System and Government

I understand social justice as the fair distribution of resources among the members of society. Stanhope and Lancaster (2020) view social justice as a reasonable allocation of benefits and burdens among individuals. Socialized healthcare is a controversial topic because it ensures universal access to care but eliminates the competition between healthcare providers, which might undermine the quality of services. It is not the same as social justice because it lacks the burdens component if universal care is provided for all people regardless of their taxpayer status or contribution to society. Equal access to socioeconomic opportunities is the requirement for equal healthcare. Social justice might be achieved through implementing some aspects of socialized medicine, such as free preventive procedures. Communism does not necessarily mean social justice as it refers to the ideology of community-owned property and the absence of state government. The Healthcare system needs government assistance in the form of fair policymaking promoting social justice.

Based on the value aspect, the healthcare system is fair because people get services in exchange for the amount of money they or their insurance companies pay. However, people who are unemployed or work part-time jobs do not have insurance provided by their employer or enough pocket money to pay for medical services, including preventive care (Laureate Education, 2009). The promotion of good and prevention of harm are the primary goals of ethical care (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2020). Thus, the healthcare system is not fair in the ethical sense since it limits the rights of disadvantaged populations for health and well-being by presenting health as a product for privileged customers or patients.

If I could instantly fix the healthcare system, the first thing that I would notice would be the absence of preventable diseases and deaths caused by health inequity. The current state of the healthcare system and its dependence on insurance coverage leads to health disparities. Ethnic minorities and low-income individuals cannot afford quality healthcare services, insurance, or medication (Laureate Education, 2009). As a result of high medical costs and insurance-based healthcare, a lot of people do not go to hospitals for treatment. Instead, they are admitted to the ER (in a critical condition), where they can receive free care following the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 (Zhou et al., 2019). Therefore, it is vital for nurses and other medical professionals to advocate for changes in federal and state legislation to provide resources and funding for disease prevention in vulnerable minority and poverty-affected populations.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2009). Family, community and population-based care: Vulnerable populations [Video file]. Author.

Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2020). Public health nursing: Population-centered health care in the community (10 th ed.). Elsevier.

Zhou, J. Y., Amanatullah, D. F., & Frick, S. L. (2019). EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) obligations: A case report and review of the literature. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 101 (12). Web.

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Advantages Of Government Hospitals (Essay Sample)

Hospitals are universally accepted as the place of healing. There are two types of hospitals: a private hospital and a government owned hospital. A private hospital is owned either by family, or a group of companies and are usually quite more expensive in terms of payment than a government owned hospital wherein most of the costing are either free or cheaper than the bills given by a private owned hospital. This essay focuses on the benefits of availing the services of government hospitals.

Availing the services of government hospitals is highly beneficial. Apart from the aforementioned cheaper and/or almost free price, government health care also removes discrimination among patients. Discrimination among patients can come in the form of either racial or financial terms. Racial discrimination in hospitals mainly root from medical givers preferring the patients to have the same “blood” in them wherein they have this mindset that they belong to that country due to same ethnicity, beliefs, and color. Racial discrimination rarely applies to hospitals though; however, financial discrimination is another story.

Having trouble obtaining medical care because some filthy-rich businessman managed to get the health benefit before you did, needed to consult a doctor for a check-up but his professional fee and his prescription medicines are so expensive or ever needed a transplant but you were put at the bottom of the list because you cannot pay up? Government health care prevents such financial discrimination by making sure that medical givers treat all patients equally. By making sure that all patients are treated equally, be it they are financially capable or not, the government can ensure quality healthcare for everyone.

Another advantage of Government health care lies in their health care plan regulation. This health care plan runs on making sure that insurance companies abide by their policies. Health insurance companies usually over-charge consumers and even go as far as deny the patient who availed their insurance ample medical coverage for toxic or chronic diseases, make their insurance too expensive for a middle-class patient to afford, rejection due to pre-medical conditions and technologically advanced medical testing. Unfortunately, privately owned insurance health care companies are difficult, even for the government to enforce their rules and regulations in terms of health care insurance. Government regulated health insurance is a different case than a privately owned one since the government will force insurance companies to be held accountable for any medical infractions as well as guaranteeing that health care is provided to everyone.

An ongoing problem on government health care all around the globe is the quality of the health care itself. Government usually solves this problem by gathering, analyzing, and disseminating information. The government also takes into consideration the specialization of doctors that patients with special and critical conditions need. By prioritizing what medical givers should practice and disseminating information regarding the disease and the proper medication and preventions needed, the government not only advertises a safer environment but better quality health care.

Lastly, access to a far more advanced medical technology set-up, patients are able to access first class equipment. While it is true that some private hospitals have the finest medical equipment: from a CT Scan to the sharpest and sturdiest surgical tools, public health care is also given funds by the government in replacing old technologies with new ones which will not only grant patients who can barely afford expensive medication access but will also be of benefit for all since these modern technologies will be able to help in the identification of diseases which may have not been detectable by old practices and old medical equipment.

83 Healthcare Administration Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best healthcare administration topic ideas & essay examples, ✍️ healthcare administration essay topics for college, 📌 good essay topics on healthcare administration, 💡 simple & easy healthcare administration titles.

• Emergency Action Plan: Occupational Safety and Health Administration Company Name: Company Name. Company Contact: Name: Your Name Title: Position Telephone/Cell: Email: In the event of an emergency, employees are alerted by:
• Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Administration The key stakeholders in addressing healthcare inefficiencies in the administrative processes include the government, hospital administrators and the direct-patient contact staff.
• Job Demands in Canadian Health Services Office Administration Currently, relevant job demands in the modern field of Canadian office administration of health services pose considerable challenges for newcomers to the industry.
• Gender and Leadership in Healthcare Administration The authors were studying the challenges that the female gender face in healthcare leadership. The authors concluded that gender inequality in management could not be affected by the type and size of the hospital.
• Administration Errors in a Mental Health Hospital The selection of a representative group from the population of interest is among the prerequisites for the production of reliable and generalizable results.
• Silica Exposure and Occupational Safety and Health Administration In this research, the main focus is to investigate whether the exposure rate on a worker at the Iron Foundry is above the set standard by the OSHA.
• Healthcare Administration: The Role of Information Technologies Sometimes people can use the OR and AND tools to calculate the probability. In addition to probability, Excel allows people to calculate measures of the central tendency.
• The Job of Health Care Administration or Executive Assistance In terms of the contributions of the course to the development of the professional experience for the position, such areas as decision-making and problem-solving were especially relevant.
• Career Development in Healthcare Administration The institution provides regular training to the members and updates the current trends that are witnessed in the healthcare sector. Second, The American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration is a website that helps in […]
• ACOs in Healthcare Administration As part of the Medicare and Medicaid program, the main goal of coordinated care is to optimize services by reducing duplication of services and improving care timeliness.
• Amazon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration The story of one of the Amazon workers presents the company as a firm that does not value ethics in its strategic scheme. It is a matter of ethics to prioritize the employee’s well-being and […]
• Healthcare Administration: The Legal Aspects The essence of this study is to evaluate and assert the usefulness and the advantage of using case studies in teaching legal aspects in healthcare administration.
• Health Administration: Ethical and Legal Perspectives The HIPAA’s primary role was established in order to give people the authority to share their personal medical information, and again gain more accessibility of information about their health status healthcare.
• Legal Aspects of the US Health Care Administration Limiting or revoking the privileges of a medical practitioner is the extreme disciplinary step taken by the medical staff leaders of hospitals in USA.
• Aspects of Health Care Administration In most cases, the role of the administrator in a medical facility is to oversee and ensure the smooth sailing of the medical institution.
• U. S Public Health Administration The public health budget process is an important tool for governments in mobilizing resources that are needed for health, in the implementation of health-based policies and in the provision of quality health services that is […]
• US Public Health Administration While aspects of identification and curing of various kinds of diseases are surely within the agenda of public health, this is not its main task, which, in its broadest scope would embrace, preventive and protective […]
• US Public Health Public Health Administration If a catastrophic disaster occurs, public health staff are needed in terms of quantity and quality therefore, the US government has come up with initiatives to deal with the above.
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center Substance abuse and mental health services administration has a well-established principle of collaborating with public and private partners so as to provide the most effective services to the needy people within the society.
• Applications for Health Care Administration Finally, there is a need to build a simple but robust network infrastructure within the hospital that will not only allow the above three systems to operate collectively, but also prepare the hospital for future […]
• Finding a Job in the Healthcare Administration Field Following the recommendations, looking for new openings, and continuously working on skills and knowledge improvement can lead one to a good position in healthcare administration.
• Veterans Health Administration Integrative Care Model The purpose of the following study is to provide a thorough research on the influence of the practices conducted on mental health and to examine the overall effectiveness of the integrative care system in delivering […]
• Healthcare Organization’s Strategic Administration To cater to the needs of the population and react to the external and internal fluctuations of the environment, the company has to enhance the quality of the provided services and create a favorable environment […]
• Health and Human Services Administration Master’s Program In this section, I will discuss some of the reasons why I think I am best-placed in my career and the areas I need to sharpen my metrics.
• Health Administration Instructor’s Teaching Philosophy The US labor statistics show that health care is one of the most rapidly developing fields that accounts for the fact that it provides a huge variety of opportunities and options to build a career.
• Business Administration in the Healthcare Field Precise and states the objectives of the hospital, the market segment that it intends to serve, and how it intends to serve it.
• Health Administration Course and Lessons Learnt In this paper, I will present my reflections on the module assignments to identify the areas that I excelled in and those that I need to improve on.
• “Legal Aspects of Healthcare Administration” by George Pozgar In the context of healthcare, information management can be described as the maintenance of records containing the confidential data of patients and medical workers.
• Veteran Health Administration Program The hospital seems to offer quality care to patients, and one of the studies done showed that patients with diabetes got more care than in other health care systems.
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration In population, the mental state of people that arises from the need of space in excess of the available supply is referred to as crowding.
• Legal Aspects of US Healthcare System Administration Professional conduct within a health care setting is grounded in values that reflect the nature and the dynamics of the relationships between a provider and a patient.
• Veterans Health Administration in Northern California The organization mentors and monitors its employees using the best Performance Management System. The healthcare facility has hired the right supervisors and managers to monitor the system.
• Veteran Health Administration: Electronic Systems It is from such sessions that the staff will get a chance to learn from individuals who have prior significant experiences as well as knowledge in their areas of specialization.
• Veterans Health Administration System Development Lifecycle Evidence in support of this is identified in the GAO report which highlights the fact that despite spending large sums on money and time on the VA project implementation is yet to be done on […]
• Mental Health Administration With the increased number of cases, the government opted to have a policy that would see the proper administration of the condition; this lead to the formation of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services […]
• Healthcare Administration: Foreign Trade Commission The role of FTC is to ensure effective law enforcement on consumer interests by provision and sharing of its expertise with the federal state, international agencies and the legislative body in the US.
• Effects of Globalization in Health Care Administration In this regard, it fronts considerable challenges to the healthcare sector in the realms of administration and service provision. It is crucial to understand the provisions of globalization and how they affect the healthcare administration.
• Legal Aspects of Healthcare Administration This essay looks at the case of Terri Schiavo and the ethical issues that arose from it, the definitions used to judge cases similar to it from a bioethics perspective and it will attempt to […]
• Ethics in Health Administration The first group focuses on the issues that revolve around making of ethical decisions as well as the universal issues that have a bearing on ethics.
• Ethics in Health Administration: Four Principles of Autonomy For this reason, the role of the healthcare administrator will be to ensure that all the physicians in the organizations respect the choices made by the patients regarding treatment and other important factors pertaining the […]
• Business Administration in Healthcare Field The difference in the human perception of 3D and 2D images that calls for 3D image processing is the major focus of development in the field of informatics.
• The Evolution of Healthcare Administration
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• Useful Professional Associations in Healthcare Administration
• The Role of Stakeholders and Community Assessment in Health Nursing Collaboration between community health nurses and community stakeholders as well as community resource assessment can help nurses promote population health.
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• How to Manage the Healthcare Administration in Real Life?
• Pros and Cons of the New Master’s Program in Healthcare Administration
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• Sources of Income in the Healthcare Administration: How They Can Affect the Work of Employees
• Healthcare Administrators: Roles and Responsibilities
• Debunking Misconceptions About Healthcare Administration Roles
• The Future of Healthcare Administration
• The Realities of Healthcare Management: What Can Go Unnoticed?
• Healthcare Administration: A Combination of Theory and Practice
• What Is the Role of Information Technology in the Healthcare Administration?
• Stress and the Hospital Administrator: Sources and Solutions
• Technological Advancements in Healthcare Administration
• View of Hospital Administration as a Profession
• Success Factors and Leadership Strategies Healthcare Administration
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IvyPanda . 2024. "83 Healthcare Administration Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 27, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/healthcare-administration-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "83 Healthcare Administration Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 27, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/healthcare-administration-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "83 Healthcare Administration Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 27, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/healthcare-administration-essay-topics/.

Short Essay on Hospital in English

Hospital is a kind of institution which deals with health care activities. It is an institution that provides treatment to patients with specialized staff and equipment. It serves humanity as a whole. It is an integral part of the social welfare of a society or a state.

Patients with various health problems are being treated in hospitals. Hospitals have all the facilities to deal with any kind of disease starting from physical health issues to mental and psychological deficiencies.

The types of hospitals in general are private hospitals and hospitals run by the government. Private hospitals basically are run by an individual or a group of physicians or by any private organization. Another kind of hospital prevails in India and it is the semi-government hospital that is run by both the government and the private organization.

The general hospitals provide different kinds of healthcare, but with limited capacity. Patients suffering from any kind of diseases or patients of any sexes, of any age are been treated in general hospitals. On the other hand, specialized hospitals limit their services to a specific health condition such as orthopedics, oncology, maternity, etc.

Hospitals aim to provide maximum health services. They ensure care, cure, and preventive services. Some hospitals also serve as training centers for the upcoming physicians and provide training to the professionals.

Research works also are conducted in hospitals. The functions of the hospital involve in-patient services, patients care, medical and nursing research, promoting awareness for some unavoidable diseases.

The essential services available in a hospital are emergency and casualty services, IPD services, OPD services, and Operation Theatre. However, it is a place where people visit with belief and trust to get recovered from any kind of disease.

Table of Contents

Question on Hospital

What is hospital care.

Hospitals aim to provide maximum health services. They ensure care, cure, and preventive services.

What is the main function of a hospital?

The functions of the hospital involve in-patient services, patients care, medical and nursing research, promoting awareness for some unavoidable diseases.

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What Are The Top 10 Government Hospitals In Chennai?

Zaid Siddiqui

Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, is also called the medical capital of India due to the presence of top-class hospital chains offering affordable treatments.

(People Also Like To Read: Have A Look At The Top Max Hospitals In India 2023 )

Some of the interventional benefits that you can enjoy in the top 10 hospitals in Chennai are:

• Quality healthcare:  Chennai has top-class government healthcare facilities with highly skilled doctors and medical staff. Many of these facilities are accredited by international organizations and adhere to global standards of quality.
• Cost-effective:  As we all know, medical treatment in Chennai is generally more affordable than in many other countries, which is an attractive option for patients who are seeking high-quality medical care at a lower cost. The government of Tamil Nadu solely focuses on the vital development of healthcare units in Chennai, which are wholly state-owned and provide treatment with a state-of-the-art management system.
• Availability of specialized treatments:  Chennai has specialized medical facilities that offer treatments for a wide range of conditions, including cancer, heart disease, orthopedics, and infertility.
• Access to advanced technology:  Medical facilities in government hospitals in Chennai are progressively equipped with state-of-the-art medical management and technology, allowing for more accurate diagnoses and better patient outcomes.
• Minimal waiting times:  As compared to other government facilities, the Tamil Nadu government primarily focuses on early access treatment, which helps avoid long waiting times and allows patients to get treatment more quickly, which is essential in cases where time is of the essence. 

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List Of Top 10 Government Hospitals In Chennai

1. rajiv gandhi government general hospital (rgggh).

A majorly state-owned  Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital , which was started by East India Company in the year 1664. This hospital is among India’s one of the oldest hospitals and deals with 12,000 outpatients daily. After the end of the 19th century, the Madras Medical College joined it with an influence of quality medical support.

RGGGH is also renowned as India’s medical school, where students get excellent medical knowledge and practices. This hospital has been gracing people with its multispecialty services every year, including cardiology , oncology, orthopedics, neurology, etc, with the support of the best doctors with years of clinical experience. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

Prominent Characteristics

• In its early days, this hospital was housed at Fort St. George, and in the next 25 years, it grew into a formal medical facility.
• RGGGH contributes to the second-largest number of deceased organ donations in Tamil Nadu
• The structure of this hospital has a quake-resistant design, which makes it more attractive

Established in  1664

Location: C hennai, Tamil Nadu

Address:  G.H. Post Office, Poonamallee High Road, 3, Grand Southern Trunk Rd, near Park Town, Near Chennai Central, Park Town, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600003

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2. Tamil Nadu Government Multispecialty Hospital

Tamil Nadu Government Multi-Super-Speciality Hospital  is a multispecialty tertiary care hospital managed by the government of Tamil Nadu. It has 400 beds with a state-of-the-art management system strongly influenced by top-notch medical support, including clinicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

• Built initially as the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly and Secretariat complex in 2010 to house the assembly hall, secretariat, and chief minister’s and cabinet ministers’ offices, the complex was later converted into a super-specialty hospital.
• This hospital has dedicated facilities, including 14 operation theatres, laboratories, C.T. scans, and MRI scans.
• Tamil Nadu Government Multi-Super-Speciality Hospital awarded as the best hospital in 2016

Established in 2014

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Address: Omandurar, Government Estate, Anna Salai, opposite to The Hindu Office, Anna Salai, Triplicane, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600002

3. Government Stanley Medical College Hospital

Stanley Medical College (S.M.C.) was originally 200 years old and formally established on July 2, 1938. This hospital is renowned as India’s first dedicated excellence center for hand and reconstructive microsurgery, with a separate cadaver maintenance unit. Their medical institution’s dignity is considered a heritage, and they continuously impart their finest knowledge to the community. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

• Stanley Medical College is ranked 11th in the India Today & Nielson 2013 survey.
• It is one of the medical colleges in Tamil Nadu to receive 250 MBBS seats, sanctioned in the year 2013-14

Established in 1938

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu  

Address: 474M+3M4, Unnamed Road, Seven Wells North, Old Washermanpet, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600001

4. Government Omandurar Medical College Hospital, Chennai

Government Hospital Chennai  was established in 2014 and is considered one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai. This hospital has various treatments in various specializations, such as orthopedics , dermatology, ophthalmology, E.N.T., psychiatry, radiology, imaging, etc.

This hospital has a patient-centric, dedicated environment for treatment seekers. Omandurar Medical College Hospital is progressively developing its healthcare facility with new-age technologies.

This hospital has an enrichment to evoke top-level methods for advanced treatment and a state-of-the-art management system. 

Established in 2015

Address: 169, Wallahjah Rd, Police Quarters, Triplicane, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600002

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5. Government Royapettah Hospital

With 712 beds, Government Royapettah Hospital was established in 1911. This hospital is the city’s largest peripheral hospital. It is primarily a state-owned hospital situated in Royapettah, Chennai.

This healthcare facility has been dedicated to providing age-long benefits to its patients. They have a world-class healthcare staff progressively advancing themselves with cutting-edge methods. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

• The center is the state’s first exclusive, fully government-owned cancer care facility.
•  In 2021, this hospital performed its first tumor-removal keyhole surgery.

Established in 1911

Address: West Cott Road, Royapettah, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600014

6. Government Sidha Hospital

Among the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai, Government Sidha Hospital was established in 1971. This healthcare facility is the Siddha Central Research Institution (SCRI). SCRI is one of the finest healthcare systems in the medical capital of India. It is fully equipped with dedicated inpatient and outpatient departments and excellent state-of-the-art management centers for clinical research.

For research cases and senior citizens, the investigations are done free of cost. This hospital is fully equipped with clinical facilities, including clinical research, biochemistry, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry, pharmacology, literary research, clinical pathology, and pharmacy in the various departments. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

There are several aims and objectives of SCRI:

• To promote the growth and development of the Siddha system of medicine.
• To provide medical relief through the Siddha system.
• To impart the post-graduate course of the Siddha system of medicine.
• To undertake research and dissemination.
• To act as a center of excellence.
• This hospital institution has the finest medical institute, providing quality medical science education.
• Their mission is to attain a high quality of P.G. education and good health care services in Siddha Medicine, establish Siddha as an evidence-based medicine, and develop it as a center of excellence in Siddha.

Established in 1971

Address:   2726+78P, 1st Ave, Shastri Nagar, Adyar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600020

7. C.S.I Kalyani Multispecialty Hospital

One of the largest and oldest voluntary health organizations in Chennai, C.S.I. Kalyani Multispecialty Hospital is a full-fledged multispeciality hospital with 220 beds providing all primary specialty services, catering to the health needs of all strata of society. This hospital was established by Lady White, the Methodist missionary, in 1909. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai and still has a renowned identity for providing top-notch treatment at an affordable price.

• This hospital has a dedicated environment that merely focuses on patient care with evidence-based approaches.
• Govt. of India and the Department of Ayush have a strong command over the development of this hospital.
• The institute is running a general outpatient department (O.P.D.) on all days of the week.

Established in 1909

Address: 15, Dr Radha Krishnan Salai, Loganathan Colony, Mylapore, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600004

8. Government Peripheral Hospital, Anna Nagar

Government Peripheral Hospital, Anna Nagar, has been gaining popularity for providing an excellent clinical approach to trauma services in Chennai, India. It is a wholly state-owned healthcare facility equipped with a state-of-the-art management system.

This hospital has a great history of providing medical support to patients with diverse backgrounds with favorable outcomes. Along with dedicated healthcare staff, including specialized doctors , nurses, and healthcare professionals, this hospital has significantly gained popularity among people. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

• One of the largest and oldest voluntary health organizations in the city of Chennai
• They have a robust and diverse system that deals with the poor and underprivileged, who cannot get the best treatment.
• The hospital location is very enticing; one can enjoy the sea breeze continuously blowing over Kalyani & keep the air pure and refreshing.

Established in 1979

Address: 36W9+7MV, 3rd Ave, Annai Sathya Nagar, Anna Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600102

9. Government Ophthalmic Hospital

The Government Ophthalmic Hospital, or Egmore Eye Hospital, is Asia’s oldest eye hospital. It was founded in the year 1819. To date, this healthcare facility provides every sort of treatment related to ophthalmology with continuous clinical advancement in its field. It is associated with the prestigious government general hospital and Madras Medical College, Chennai, and is affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

Established in 1819

Address: REGIONAL INSTITUTE OF OPHTHALMOLOGY AND GOVERNMENT OPHTHALMIC HOSPITAL, Rukmani Lakshmipathi Rd, Pudupet, Komaleeswaranpet, Egmore, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600008

10. Arignan Anna Government Hospital, Indian Medicine

Arignan Anna Government Hospital is among the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai , with a great history of providing outstanding trauma services in the whole city. This hospital stands as a trusted institution within the region. Their medical facility is fully equipped with top-class clinicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals. For individuals needing urgent care, Arignar Anna Govt Hospital of Indian Medicine continues to represent hope and recovery. It is one of the top 10 government hospitals in Chennai.

Established in 1974

Address: 342, 20, 18th St, Koluthuvanchery, NSK Nagar, Arumbakkam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600106

FAQs Related To Top Government Hospitals In Chennai

Q: why is chennai famous in medical.

A:  India has many renowned medical destinations, where you can get a variety of treatments as Chennai explicitly provides a comprehensive range of treatments in almost every specialization. Nevertheless, due to its highly productive medical facilities Chennai is acknowledged as the medical capital of India and it assures quality, affordability, and convenience.

Q: Which is the No. 1 government hospital in Tamil Nadu?

A: Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), is considered the No. 1 government hospital in Tamil Nadu.

Q: Which district in Tamil Nadu has the best healthcare?

A:  According to the Principal Secretary of the Health and Family Welfare Department Kancheepuram, Namakkal, and Thoothukudi districts ranked as the best in healthcare and performed well so far.

Choose GoMedii For The Best And Most Affordable Treatments In India

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We have tie-ups with one of India’s most reputed hospitals to get you the best treatment at an affordable cost. Furthermore, to avail of our packages, you can contact us on our “ Website ” or call us at +91 9599004311 . Additionally, you can also email us at [email protected] . Our team will respond to you on a priority basis.

Feel free to drop your queries through this form . Our team of experts will contact you!

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Written By Zaid Siddiqui

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Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review

Sanjay basu.

1 Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America

2 Division of General Internal Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, California, United States of America

3 Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

Jason Andrews

4 Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Sandeep Kishore

5 Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, Weill Cornell Medical College/Rockefeller University/Sloan-Kettering Institute, New York, New York, United States of America

Rajesh Panjabi

6 Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

David Stuckler

7 Department of Sociology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Conceived and designed the experiments: SB JA DS RP. Performed the experiments: SB JA. Analyzed the data: SB JA. Wrote the first draft of the manuscript: SB JA DS. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: SB JA DS SK RP. ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: SB JA DS SK RP. Agree with manuscript results and conclusions: SB JA DS SK RP.

Associated Data

A systematic review conducted by Sanjay Basu and colleagues reevaluates the evidence relating to comparative performance of public versus private sector healthcare delivery in low- and middle-income countries.

Introduction

Private sector healthcare delivery in low- and middle-income countries is sometimes argued to be more efficient, accountable, and sustainable than public sector delivery. Conversely, the public sector is often regarded as providing more equitable and evidence-based care. We performed a systematic review of research studies investigating the performance of private and public sector delivery in low- and middle-income countries.

Methods and Findings

Peer-reviewed studies including case studies, meta-analyses, reviews, and case-control analyses, as well as reports published by non-governmental organizations and international agencies, were systematically collected through large database searches, filtered through methodological inclusion criteria, and organized into six World Health Organization health system themes: accessibility and responsiveness; quality; outcomes; accountability, transparency, and regulation; fairness and equity; and efficiency. Of 1,178 potentially relevant unique citations, data were obtained from 102 articles describing studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries. Comparative cohort and cross-sectional studies suggested that providers in the private sector more frequently violated medical standards of practice and had poorer patient outcomes, but had greater reported timeliness and hospitality to patients. Reported efficiency tended to be lower in the private than in the public sector, resulting in part from perverse incentives for unnecessary testing and treatment. Public sector services experienced more limited availability of equipment, medications, and trained healthcare workers. When the definition of “private sector” included unlicensed and uncertified providers such as drug shop owners, most patients appeared to access care in the private sector; however, when unlicensed healthcare providers were excluded from the analysis, the majority of people accessed public sector care. “Competitive dynamics” for funding appeared between the two sectors, such that public funds and personnel were redirected to private sector development, followed by reductions in public sector service budgets and staff.

Conclusions

Studies evaluated in this systematic review do not support the claim that the private sector is usually more efficient, accountable, or medically effective than the public sector; however, the public sector appears frequently to lack timeliness and hospitality towards patients.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Health care can be provided through public and private providers. Public health care is usually provided by the government through national healthcare systems. Private health care can be provided through “for profit” hospitals and self-employed practitioners, and “not for profit” non-government providers, including faith-based organizations.

There is considerable ideological debate around whether low- and middle-income countries should strengthen public versus private healthcare services, but in reality, most low- and middle-income countries use both types of healthcare provision. Recently, as the global economic recession has put major constraints on government budgets—the major funding source for healthcare expenditures in most countries—disputes between the proponents of private and public systems have escalated, further fuelled by the recommendation of International Monetary Fund (an international finance institution) that countries increase the scope of private sector provision in health care as part of loan conditions to reduce government debt. However, critics of the private health sector believe that public healthcare provision is of most benefit to poor people and is the only way to achieve universal and equitable access to health care.

Why Was This Study Done?

Both sides of the public versus private healthcare debate draw on selected case reports to defend their viewpoints, but there is a widely held view that the private health system is more efficient than the public health system. Therefore, in order to inform policy, there is an urgent need for robust evidence to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of the health care provided through both systems. In this study, the authors reviewed all of the evidence in a systematic way to evaluate available data on public and private sector performance.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers used eight databases and a comprehensive key word search to identify and review appropriate published data and studies of private and public sector performance in low- and middle-income countries. They assessed selected studies against the World Health Organization's six essential themes of health systems—accessibility and responsiveness; quality; outcomes; accountability, transparency, and regulation; fairness and equity; and efficiency—and conducted a narrative review of each theme.

Out of the 102 relevant studies included in their comparative analysis, 59 studies were research studies and 13 involved meta-analysis, with the rest involving case reports or reviews. The researchers found that study findings varied considerably across countries studied (one-third of studies were conducted in Africa and a third in Southeast Asia) and by the methods used.

Financial barriers to care (such as user fees) were reported for both public and private systems. Although studies report that patients in the private sector experience better timeliness and hospitality, studies suggest that providers in the private sector more frequently violate accepted medical standards and have lower reported efficiency.

What Do These Findings Mean?

This systematic review did not support previous views that private sector delivery of health care in low- and middle-income settings is more efficient, accountable, or effective than public sector delivery. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses, but importantly, in both sectors, there were financial barriers to care, and each had poor accountability and transparency. This systematic review highlights a limited and poor-quality evidence base regarding the comparative performance of the two systems.

Additional Information

Please access these websites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244 .

• A previous PLoS Medicine study examined the outpatient care provided by the public and private sector in low-income countries
• The WHO website provides more information on healthcare systems
• The World Bank website provides information on health system financing
• Oxfam provides an argument against increased private health care in poor countries

One longstanding and polarized debate in global health concerns the appropriate role and balance of the public and private sector in providing healthcare services to populations in low- and middle-income countries [1] . In recent years, disputes between the proponents of private and public systems have become particularly heated, as the global economic recession that began in 2007 has placed major constraints on government budgets—the major funding source for healthcare expenditures in most countries ( Figure 1 ) [2] . The International Monetary Fund has recommended that countries increase the scope of private sector provision in health care as part of loan conditions [3] , often to reduce government debt [4] . Criticizing such efforts, the international nonprofit organization Oxfam, in its report “Blind Optimism,” concluded that “to achieve universal and equitable access to health care, the public sector must be made to work as the majority provider” [5] . The World Bank responded that it seeks “more pragmatic approaches that build on what is available” by engaging with the private sector in countries where public sector services perform poorly [6] ; the Center for Global Development similarly argued that the Oxfam report “ignored the informal sector,” and that poor people “want to go” to private providers and will “persist in doing so” [7] .

n  = 190 countries for which data are available. Source: [114] .

Generally, this debate has been divided between those seeking universal state-based healthcare availability and those advocating for the private sector to provide care in areas where the public sector has typically failed. Private sector advocates have pointed to evidence that the “private sector is the main provider,” as many impoverished patients prefer to seek care at private clinics [1] . They have suggested that the private sector may be more efficient and responsive to patient needs because of market competition, which they indicate should overcome government inefficiency and corruption [8] . In contrast, public sector advocates have highlighted inequities in access to health care resulting from the inability of the poor to pay for private services. They have noted that private markets often fail to deliver public health goods including preventative services (a “market failure”), and lack coordinated planning with public health systems, required to curb epidemics.

Both sides claim their critics are “ideologically biased” [9] , [10] and selectively draw on case reports to defend their viewpoints [5] , [7] . However, significant conflicts of interest may apply to both groups [11] , as large private international contractors, insurance firms, and non-governmental organizations may benefit from expanding the role of the private sector, while academics who rely on state-funded grant proposals may gain resources from a greater public sector role.

Crucially needed to inform this debate is a systematic review of existing evidence. As Hanson and colleagues note, “A strengthened evidence base on the performance of the public and private health sectors is essential to guide decision-makers towards policy choices that are appropriate for their contexts” [11] . However, in practice, studies comparing the performance of private and public sectors are difficult to implement, for several reasons. First, healthcare services are not universally dichotomized between public and private providers, as some practitioners participate in both state-based and privately owned healthcare delivery systems, and many systems are dually funded or informal. A wide range of arrangements exist for how such expenditures are spent in public versus private clinics, hospitals, and informal settings (see Box 1 for definitions). One example of this complication is the role of informal payments in public facilities. These private–public interactions confound a simplistic comparison between private and public systems. Second, state-based healthcare services and private services have coexisted in many low- and middle-income countries for decades; most countries have a large fraction (but not all) of healthcare expenditures paid for by the state, with most of the remainder paid for by households [12] . In this context, simply defining what is private or public is not straightforward. Private providers are heterogeneous, consisting of formal for-profit entities such as independent hospitals, informal entities that may include unlicensed providers, and nonprofit and non-governmental organizations.

Box 1. Different Public and Private Healthcare Delivery Agents in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Multinational and national for-profit corporations: for-profit group practices, sometimes associated with hospitals.

Formal individual private providers: individual physicians or other healthcare providers operating in smaller scale healthcare facilities or private pharmacies.

Informal for-profit providers: unlicensed, unregulated providers including shop owners, “injectors,” traditional healers, and birth attendants.

Not-for-profit providers: civil society, non-governmental, and faith-based groups, charities; and community and social enterprises, with varying degrees of regulation and oversight.

Public hospitals, health centers, and clinics: county- and district-level hospitals and clinics, with varying degrees of accessibility and user fees for patients, often having providers that also participate in private sector healthcare delivery.

Public–private partnerships: International or national associations that have varying degrees of for-profit or nonprofit status, or collaborations between for-profit and government/nonprofit entities to deliver services. Also have varying user fees for patients and varying levels of public subsidization for delivering healthcare services.

Although these debates have been highly visible, there is a dearth of reviews on the topic. An initial search of prior systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the PubMed database revealed one recent review, evaluating 80 field-based studies that directly and simultaneously compared service quality in ambulatory public and private care clinics [1] . The analysis found that private outpatient clinics often had better drug supplies and responsiveness than public clinics, but the analysis did not assess other dimensions of health system performance (such as accessibility). The review excluded studies of hospitals, case reports, intervention studies (such as how a sector responded to quality improvement programs), or statistical studies of population-level data.

The aim of the current study is to evaluate available data on public and private sector performance across the key domains of health systems competencies. Our goal is to understand how the private or public nature of a given healthcare delivery institution may impact core healthcare delivery goals. We systematically review published data and studies of private and public sector performance in low- and middle-income countries against six health systems themes used by World Health Organization (WHO), adapted from the 2000 World Health Report [13] . The six themes are as follows: accessibility and responsiveness; quality; outcomes; accountability, transparency, and regulation; fairness and equity; and efficiency [13] ( Table 1 ).

Search Strategy

We searched for primary literature in eight major databases using the indexed and free-text terms “private sector,” “privatization,” “public-private sector partnerships,” and “public sector” in various combinations, as described in Text S1 . Because much of the discussion and data collection on this topic has been performed outside of academic circles by international agencies and non-governmental groups, we supplemented the database search by conducting the same keyword searches on the websites of the WHO library database WHOLIS, the World Bank Documents and Reports repository, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Program, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Oxfam International, and the Kaiser Family Foundation Global Health Division. The search terms included studies in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or Russian, published from 1 January 1980 through 31 August 2011.

Study Selection

All titles and abstracts found by the search strategy were filtered for relevance to the study objective. Studies must have included data on a population in at least one low- or middle-income country, defined by the 2010 World Bank criteria of having current per-capita gross national income less than or equal to US$12,275 [14] . The full texts of potentially relevant articles were subject to the inclusion criteria listed in Table 2 to ensure they met basic minimum methodological standards. Qualitative studies were included if they specified a systematic methodology for interviews, focus group analysis, historical or political science analysis, or ethnographic observation (see Text S2 for the PRISMA checklist).

Data Extraction and Analysis

A data extraction method was designed by three reviewers (S. B., J. A., and D. S.). J. A. extracted the data using a preestablished standard data entry format into a database, with verification by S. B. to ensure consistency of coding. Standard data describing each study were also extracted, including the country where the study was performed, study period, study methodology, number of included participants, primary and secondary outcome measures and end points, and study limitations. Where disclosed, we noted the study funders and agencies. Disagreements between the two reviewers were resolved by consensus among all authors.

The data synthesis was structured into six themes from the updated WHO framework for health system assessment (see Table 1 for themes, subthemes, and indicators used to assess each theme) [13] . Relevant data that did not fall into one of these themes was separately included in the analysis in an “other factors” category that is discussed following the principal results. Reports containing information relevant to more than one theme were included in all related thematic areas. We did not perform further subanalysis of the highest quality studies as the authors could not agree to a vote-counting approach that would apply across the quantitative and qualitative methods and the six WHO themes captured in literature using different types of outcome variables.

The study selection process is shown in Figure 2 as a PRISMA flow diagram. Of the 1,178 potentially relevant unique citations from all literature searches, 102 studies met the inclusion criteria. Key characteristics of the included studies are summarized in Table 3 . Fifty-nine studies were empirical research studies and 13 involved meta-analysis, with the rest involving case reports or reviews. One-third of studies were carried out in the WHO-defined African region ( n  = 32) and another third in the Southeast Asian region ( n  = 34); most were published after 1990. We found that about nine out of ten studies directly compared quality of care in public versus private systems or assessed the demand for or utilization of services; the remaining studies examined drug availability or affordability or compared the cost and efficiency of services.

Theme 1. Accessibility and Responsiveness

Six articles documented that a significant proportion of outpatient services in low- and middle-income countries appeared to be provided by the private sector [15] – [18] . However, the percentage of total visits varied substantially across countries and income levels [15] . In Viet Nam, the private sector provides 60% of all outpatient contacts. In India, more than 90% of children affected by diarrhea are taken to private healthcare providers, but the income gradient was not specified among studies reporting this data [17] . Among participants surveyed for HIV testing in 12 African countries, the proportion of patients using the private sector for testing ranged from 3% to 45% [19] .

Several studies disaggregated utilization by income levels, tending to find that the private sector predominantly serves more affluent populations. A widely cited study on access of the private and public sectors was performed by the World Bank in 22 low- and middle-income countries using Demographic and Health Surveys [20] . Although interpretation of the findings varies [5] , [20] , the analysis found that in 19 of the countries studied, both wealthy and poor families received more care from the private than the public sector, but only when the private sector included private drug shops and similar informal providers [21] ; when the composition of the private sector was limited to only licensed and certified healthcare personnel, the public sector provided the majority of care in low- and middle-income countries. However, there were three exceptions: Namibia, Tanzania, and Zambia, where private sectors are majority providers even when only licensed personnel are counted. The percentage of visits to the private sector was lower among the poor than among the wealthy in these surveys, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Additionally, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where the private sector provided more than a quarter of all childhood immunizations overall, among the wealthiest quartile it provided 72% of immunizations but among the poorest quartile it provided only 3% [16] . In Uganda, 17.4% of women use private clinics or midwives for their family-planning-related medical care due to short distances and low transport costs, according to interviews conducted among 10,706 women, of whom 57% were in the country's lowest wealth quintile [18] .

Few studies have investigated “accessibility” per se (i.e., the ability to access available services). However, wait times were consistently found to be shorter in private sector than in public sector facilities [22] , [23] . One interview-based study in Ghana suggested that waiting times among public sector facilities could be longer for the same condition than private sector facilities by one or two hours [22] . Women living in rural Nigeria also reported preferring private obstetric services to public services because doctors were more frequently present at the time of patient presentation [23] .

Patients tended to report worse hospitality from providers at public than private facilities (13 studies) [24] – [36] . In Bangladesh, for example, public providers ranked lower than private providers on scale-based surveys in which patients assessed the diagnostic explanation given them, courtesy of staff, cleanliness of facilities, capacity building, and the availability of certain medical inputs [36] . A study in India found that patients were seen for longer durations, were more likely to have a physical exam during their visit, and were more likely to have their diagnosis explained to them by private sector physicians than public sector ones [33] . Analysis in several countries suggested that patients in private sector facilities reported preferring the facilities because of shorter waiting periods, longer or more flexible opening hours, and better availability of staff [34] .

Theme 2. Quality of Health Care

Nine retrospective chart reviews and survey-based studies found that diagnostic accuracy and adherence to medical management standards were worse among private than public sector care providers [37] – [45] . Most of these studies examined infectious disease management protocols, including for tuberculosis and malaria [46] . Private practitioners had significantly worse knowledge of correct diagnosis and treatment. Other disease categories showed similar patterns of lower quality in the private sector. In Nigeria, public providers were significantly more likely to use rapid malaria diagnostics and to use the recommended combination therapies than private providers [47] .

Similar poor adherence to guidelines in prescription practices, including subtherapeutic dosing, by private sector providers has been associated with a rise in drug-resistant malaria in Nigeria [47] . Parallel results were reported from Viet Nam [48] . In an analysis of outcome data from 24 countries, children with diarrhea were found to be less likely to receive appropriate oral rehydration salts and more likely to receive unnecessary antibiotics when seeing private providers than when seeing public providers [49] . However, a study of 119 private and ten public health clinics in Uganda found that both private and public providers prescribed antibiotics incorrectly (including not prescribing them when indicated), and in this study public providers were worse in adhering to national malaria treatment standards (14% versus 27%, p  = 0.002) [45] .

Poor adherence to guidelines in prescription practices, including prescribing subtherapeutic doses, failure to provide oral rehydration salts, and prescribing of unnecessary antibiotics were more likely to occur among private than public providers [47] – [49] , although there were exceptions [45] . Higher rates of potentially unnecessary procedures, particularly cesarean sections (C-sections), were also reported at private than at public settings [50] , [51] . One analysis of the Peruvian health system found significantly higher rates of C-sections after the privatization of delivery. The pre-reform rates in the private sector were already higher than the WHO recommended rate of 10%–15%; after reform, the rate exceeded 50%. The same has been found in South Africa, where 62% of women delivering in the private sector had C-sections, compared with 18% in the public sector [51] . Studies in Mexico suggested that fee-for-service payment structures (which are more heavily present in private than in public care delivery settings) incentivized increased C-sections [23] .

Two cross-sectional studies documented a lack of drug availability and service provision at public facilities. A semi-structured questionnaire distributed to 24 health secretariats and directors of 39 city hospitals and 26 referral and teaching hospitals revealed that 76% of state facilities and 67% of city facilities lacked assisted reproductive technologies that were widely available in private sector facilities (though the exact percentage among such private facilities was not evaluated) [52] . In Tanzania, a semi-structured questionnaire distributed to 80 randomly selected patients and 45 health facility personnel staff working in diabetic clinics found that private facilities tend to stock more types of oral hypoglycemic agents than public facilities [53] . However, studies did not make clear whether the additional types of drugs were related to better outcomes or were simply additional brands of equivalent medication on hand.

Some studies of quality of care were performed in the private sector without having a comparative public sector group. Two studies in South Africa found that the majority of private general practitioners were not aware of the recommended medications, doses, or durations for treatment of sexually transmitted infections [54] , [55] . Reviews in Nigeria and Laos reported similarly widespread use of ineffective therapies for malaria in the private sector [56] , [57] . Sexually transmitted disease management in private clinics and drugs shops in Uganda revealed that 93% of cases were not properly managed per national guidelines, and the cure rate was 47% [58] .

Dispensation of unnecessary medications and procedures was also reported to be higher among private sector providers according to four reports based on chart reviews. The most common incidents involved the unnecessary use of antibiotics for treatment of diarrheal diseases and non-complicated acute respiratory infections [32] , [49] . Reports from Africa and Laos suggest ineffective and sometimes harmful pharmaceuticals are being distributed in the private sector [56] , [57] .

Surveys of patients' perceptions of care quality were mixed. While two survey-based studies suggested that patients perceived higher quality among private practitioners, possibly due to frequent prescribing of medications and more time spent with patients [20] , [34] , three interview-based studies suggested that patients perceived public sector healthcare workers as more competent [32] , [59] , [60] .

Theme 3. Patient Outcomes

Public sector provision was associated with higher rates of treatment success for tuberculosis and HIV [61] – [64] as well as vaccination [65] , [66] . For example, in Pakistan, a matched cohort study in Karachi found that public sector tuberculosis care resulted in an 85% higher treatment success rate than private sector care [63] . In Thailand, patients seeking care in private institutions had significantly lower treatment success rates for tuberculosis, which was attributed to a three to five times greater likelihood of being prescribed non-WHO-recommended regimens than in the public sector [61] . In South Korea, tuberculosis treatment success rates were 51.8% in private clinics as opposed to 79.7% in public clinics, with only 26.2% of patients in private clinics receiving the recommended therapy, and over 40% receiving an inappropriately short duration of therapy [62] . Similarly higher rates of treatment failure were observed for private than public system patients on antiretroviral therapy for HIV in Botswana [64] . In India, an analysis of over 120,000 households, adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic factors, found that children receiving private health services were less likely to receive measles vaccinations [65] . Similar findings were reported from Cambodia [66] .

Studies comparing pre- and post-privatization outcomes tended to find worse health system performance associated with rapid and extensive healthcare privatization initiatives. In Colombia, following major privatization reforms in 1993, population vaccine coverage declined for several diseases in the country, and tuberculosis incidence rose significantly [67] . In Brazil, privatization of fertility control services led to increased abortions, sterilization, and improper use of oral contraceptives (obtained without medical consultation), ultimately linked to higher mortality rates among young women [68] . However, a slower pace of privatization of health care services did not appear to correlate with a substantial worsening in patient outcomes among Latin American countries [69] .

Theme 4. Accountability, Transparency, and Regulation

Data on this theme tended to be unavailable from the private sector. No papers were found to describe any systematic collection of outcome data from entirely private sector sources. One recent independent review of Ghana's private sector referred to the private sector as a “black box,” with a dearth of information on delivery practices and outcomes [22] . Tuberculosis and malaria case notification to the public health system was particularly poor among private sector providers as compared to public providers in a number of countries [28] , [48] , [70] . However, while national vital statistics databases collected from public sector clinics and hospitals were widely available, they varied considerably in quality according to external assessments [22] , [71] .

Public–private partnerships also lacked data. A systematic review of data from public–private partnerships (including arrangements among governments and private, for-profit contractors) found few reported data that were of sufficient quality to assess the impact of partnership services and programs [72] . Poor data availability was observed in another systematic collection from several countries' private–public partnerships for sexual and reproductive health services. Most data available showed that after brief training of health providers, provider responses to questionnaires improved in accuracy, but no assessments were made of health outcomes [71] . An exception was a partnership in India that demonstrated increased birth attendant coverage from 27% to 53% over 7 mo among a cohort of 97,000 women [73] .

Several reports observed significant public spending being used to regulate the private sector in order to improve patient care quality, particularly in African countries, and with limited effectiveness [22] , [74] – [76] . The effectiveness of these regulations of the private sector was found to vary, often depending on public monitoring and enforcement [17] , [34] , [77] . Regulations to reduce the sale of unnecessary breast milk substitutes by private drug shops in Laos had limited impact until government inspectors visited sites to ensure appropriate sales and provided sanctions for legal violations [17] . In Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, and Bihar, clinical education programs to improve distribution of oral rehydration salts and reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing were found to have a greater impact when patients also received education, and when community healthcare workers were involved in monitoring, than when education was given only to clinicians [17] . Reviews in Zimbabwe and Tanzania identified anti-competitive practices and sales of inappropriate drugs [75] ; attempted regulations in Zimbabwe were ineffective [76] . One review in Ghana indicated that the key public agency in charge of such regulation was unable to identify a large number of private providers in order to assess accreditation and quality: 2,612 of 11,430 drug shops were registered but had not received licenses [22] . A private–public partnership in South Africa to educate providers about national guidelines for sexually transmitted disease prevention and control had no effect on practice [77] . In Egypt a comparative assessment of clinical education programs found greater improvements in public sector practices than private sector practices [34] .

Theme 5. Fairness and Equity

Financial barriers to care, particularly user fees, were reported to be prevalent in both private and public systems. A World Bank study in Ghana concluded that there was no systematic evidence indicating whether user fees in the public sector were different than in the private sector [78] ; however, the data presented showed that out-of-pocket user fees for patients were highest for private not-for-profit, lowest for public, and intermediate for private self-financed providers [22] . Hence, the conclusions of the report appear to be disputed by the data within the report.

As noted in the preceding sections, private sector health services tend to cater more greatly to groups with higher income and fewer medical needs (an illustration of the “inverse care law”), resulting in disparities in coverage [35] , [79] – [85] , although findings varied in several cases [86] , [87] . Some studies suggested there was a systematic bias against indigent patients in terms of both quality and access. Exclusion of poor patients by the private sector was observed in South Africa [80] and Paraguay [81] . Poor patients were as likely as wealthier patients to seek care from private providers in Laos, but poorer patients received service from less qualified providers, with limited-quality services (no exam or advice, only medication dispensing) [35] . While most reports described income-based stratification in access, one report described stratification based on gender in addition to income. A nationally representative, cross-sectional, cluster-sample survey of 7,308 children in randomly selected rural and urban populations across Bangladesh observed that over 90% were taken to the private sector. However, when patients arrived at private clinics, children from higher income households and male children were significantly more often ( p <0.001) directed to a licensed provider and treated with oral rehydration solution or an antibiotic than female or poor children [85] .

Several studies suggested that the process of privatizing existing public services increased inequalities in the distribution of services. Analyses of the Tanzanian and Chilean health systems found that privatization led to many clinics being built in areas with less need, whereas prior to privatization government clinics had opened in underserved areas and made greater improvements in expanding population coverage of health services [82] – [84] . Privatization in China was statistically related to a rise in out-of-pocket expenditures, such that by 2001, half of Chinese surveyed reported that they had forgone health care in the previous year due to costs; out-of-pocket expenses accounted for 58% of healthcare spending in 2002 compared with 20% in 1978 when privatization began. The cost burdens of privatization related to an increase in disparities in healthcare coverage and infant mortality between urban and rural areas [79] . One survey-based study using Demographic Health Survey data from 34 sub-Saharan African countries found that privatization was associated with increased access, and reduced disparities in access between rich and poor [86] . A second analysis of the same dataset, however, found no change in inequality in use of modern contraceptives with the expansion of the private sector [87] .

Private contracting and social franchises showed potential for expanding private sector coverage to impoverished groups, although conclusions are tentative because comparisons to the public sector were unavailable. One World Bank study in Cambodia reported improvements in healthcare coverage in poor districts after contracting out services to private companies specifically to increase coverage. When contracts explicitly included targets for reaching the poor, contractors improved health services for the most marginalized groups, although comparison was not made to the results of a similar investment in public sector services [88] . Several related World Bank initiatives took the form of social franchises, in which private providers pay a fee and are provided training, managerial assistance, and certification in a provider network [20] , [89] , [90] . Several case studies of social franchises [20] , [89] , [90] found higher care utilization among the lower socioeconomic groups of private franchisers than of control private clinics for contraceptive use, HIV counseling, antenatal care, and vaccination [17] , [91] , [92] .

Theme 6. Efficiency

Several reports observed higher prescription drug costs in the private sector for equivalent clinical diagnoses [33] , [36] , [53] , [67] , [93] – [96] . In a survey study of prescription costs in India, costs were higher for every class of visit in the private sector [33] . Two-thirds of outpatients in the private sector, compared with one-third in the public sector, received an injection for similar presentations, but the study did not investigate what fraction was unnecessary [33] .

Both generic and brand-name drugs were found to be higher in price in the private sector [96] . Tanzanian private facilities typically used more brand-name oral hypoglycemic agents, but even generic medications were five times higher in price [53] . Similar findings were reported in India [96] . A study in Bangladesh found that private sector healthcare prices in the country—not just those associated with medications—have been growing far above the inflation rate [36] .

There is also evidence that the process of privatization is associated with increased drug costs [36] , [53] , [67] , [93] , [94] , [96] . A study of the Malaysian health system found that increasing privatization of health services was associated with increased medicine prices and decreased stability of prices [93] . Healthcare costs in Colombia rose significantly following privatization reform in 1993, and 52% of capitation fees were spent on administration [67] . Similar privatization in some parts of South Africa were associated with a 13% to 32% cost increase in overall health spending, without associated increases in coverage or indications [94] ; costs of prescriptions were significantly lower in the public sector, likely due to generic substitution, prepackaging of medications, and use of treatment protocols [95] .

Higher drug costs are in part associated with disease complications attributable to delayed diagnosis or incorrect disease management [97] , [98] . In Bolivia, seeking care in the private sector was associated with longer delays in tuberculosis diagnosis and greater costs [97] , [98] . It was estimated that in Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa, unnecessary C-sections increased delivery-related health costs in the private sector by at least 10-fold [23] . In Bangladesh, private contracting of health services appeared to increase costs related to complications and delays in service access [36] .

Several World Bank studies found significant fragmentation in purchasing and distribution across and within the public and private sectors, resulting in higher drug prices and redundant treatments that increase overall healthcare costs [22] , [99] . The absence of reliable distributors for pharmaceuticals in a study in Ghana led to several intermediary groups being used to distribute medications, increasing prices between 5% and 200% [22] . The large number of small-scale hospitals and clinics in some sub-Saharan African countries fragmented delivery, such that patient diagnoses and treatment histories were unavailable between institutions [22] , [99] , often significantly delaying care, and resulting in redundant tests and sometimes administration of incorrect medication to patients. Several private primary care providers reported difficulties referring their patients to public sector secondary care facilities, as public facilities did not accept the diagnoses made by the private providers and often required the patient to restart the consultation process [99] .

Competition between public and private delivery tended to decrease drug prices. One large multilevel analysis of the content and cost of 700 medication transactions observed in 14 private and public settings in Mali revealed that private providers were more likely to prescribe brand-name drugs, injectable drugs, and more antibiotics; however, the availability of drugs in the public sector decreased prices in the private sector [100] .

Contracting of public healthcare services to private providers has also been estimated by the World Bank to reduce costs of and waiting times for contracted services [36] , [101] , although the effects of contracting differ markedly by the type of healthcare service and across countries [17] , [102] . In Cambodia, contracted districts had costs of $22.7 per person per year versus $26.4 among non-contracted districts, although there were no tests of statistical significance [36] . One highly cited secondary analysis reported this outcome as a 17% savings resulting from contracting [101] . Peer-reviewed studies of contracting in Zimbabwe and South Africa found that costs were unchanged by contracting in South Africa but were lower after contracting in Zimbabwe [17] . One review of contracting experience in Madagascar and Senegal found that large expenditure from public sector ministries was necessary to manage and supervise private contracts, increasing overall costs in those two countries by 13% and 17%, respectively [102] .

Other Observed Factors

A few key findings reported in articles did not clearly fit into the WHO health system themes, mainly involving recent reports of complex “competitive dynamics” between private and public health sectors. First, a “crowding out” effect appeared to occur between private and public sector services for expanding delivery. This process involved the transfer of public funds and personnel to private sector development, followed by reductions in public sector service budgets and staff availability. In Ghana, new private services in urban middle- and upper-socioeconomic populations were found to reduce revenues for public sector hospitals that also provided care to poorer populations [22] . At times, however, the process was a passive privatization: public sector funds were increasingly allocated to private–public partnerships without accompanying shifts in demand, so that the public sector's effective budget per patient was reduced. This dynamic was observed in post-apartheid South Africa [103] , as well as in Uganda [104] and Brazil [105] . Public–private partnerships and private contractors were often involved in such scenarios, but did not typically disclose the data necessary to fully evaluate these arrangements.

Public and private sector interactions also had implications for delivery, staffing, and disease control. Interviews of Indian patients suggested that several private practitioners who work in both public and private sectors advised patients to visit their private clinics or requested further payments in order to continue providing care in the public clinic [106] . Doctors tended to migrate towards private sector and urban jobs, depriving the public sector and rural areas of physicians [107] . However, private hospital systems often subsidize or provide healthcare technologies to patients who cannot obtain these services from public hospitals. For example, in Botswana, private hospitals often receive cancer patients from public hospitals that are unable to provide radiation oncology services [78] . In some cases, however, the services in differing sectors undermined performance of one or both sectors. Several studies found that poor reporting of diseases in the private sector impeded public sector control of communicable diseases [28] , [48] , [70] .

Our systematic review of comparative analyses of public and private healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries found strengths and limitations in both sectors for each of six main WHO health systems framework themes. Private sector healthcare systems tended to lack published data by which to evaluate their performance, had greater risks of low-quality care, and served higher socio-economic groups, whereas the public sector tended to be less responsive to patients and lacked availability of supplies. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, the private sector appeared to have lower efficiency than the public sector, resulting from higher drug costs, perverse incentives for unnecessary testing and treatment, greater risks of complications, and weak regulation. Both public and private sector systems had poor accountability and transparency. Within all WHO health system themes, study findings varied considerably across countries and by the methods employed.

The review has several limitations, which reflect the existing data and literature purporting to compare the healthcare performance of public and private sectors. First, existing studies have focused on isolated topics where data are more abundant, and as a result have overlooked important dimensions of health sector performance. To address this limitation, we drew on a broader range of data, including reports from non-governmental organizations and international agencies like the World Bank. This step was particularly important for acquiring data from the private sector, since such data are relatively unavailable in the peer-reviewed academic literature. Thus, some studies included were not peer-reviewed. Our review involved a detailed analysis of methodological criteria for these studies to ensure they met similar standards of data analysis and reporting as peer-reviewed research. Second, although it was not possible to perform a quantitative meta-analysis because of variations in coding and outcomes, we were able to identify unsubstantiated claims in several cases, which appeared more prominent among non-peer reviewed sources. For example, the World Bank has made strong claims that investing in public–private partnerships will improve efficiency and effectiveness in the health sector [108] , yet several of its publications revealed that these assertions were either unsupported by data or the data was not provided in sufficient detail to pass minimal inclusion criteria required for this review [20] , [78] . Efforts are needed to address potential conflicts of interest of such agencies and their implications for research and data reporting, particularly as their analyses are often very highly cited in the academic literature on health system assessment and performance.

Third, our reliance of the WHO health system themes enabled the analysis to address systematically and comprehensively the existing research on public and private sectors. However, a limitation of the thematic framework, for example, is that several elements of the patient experience in healthcare settings, such as waiting times, are not systematically cataloged in current assessments. This implies that future research in the area should include a focus on how experiential aspects of care are relevant to healthcare seeking and outcomes (such as the likelihood of follow-up among patients requiring return visits) for differently structured care environments. Fourth, the review identified mixed results in several cases and was unable to account for a range of potential modifying factors, partly as a limitation of the broad WHO health system components that do not incorporate contextual factors. For example, treatment of infectious diseases in public settings may be more efficient than in private settings because of higher volume, and greater use of systematized protocols due to that higher volume. Such differences limit the ability of existing work to compare fairly the public and private sector for differing disease categories and in differing social and economic contexts of healthcare delivery.

Although it was not the focus of our research, we observed that some of our findings in low- and middle-income countries mirrored existing evidence from high-income countries. For example, the lack of data from private sector groups was similar to the situation in the UK, where the privately run Independent Sector Treatment Centres was unable to provide healthcare performance data when required [109] . However, our evidence also indicates that contextual factors modify the relationships we have observed, so that it is not straightforward to transpose health system evidence from high-income countries to low- and middle-income countries. Importantly, we observed that regulatory conditions interact with the effectiveness of public and private sector provision, but in low- and middle-income countries regulatory capacity is much weaker. As one example, the reviewed data suggest that systems that incentivize more procedures (rather than better outcomes) tend to lead to inefficiencies and poorer health outcomes. One extensively studied alternative system in high-income countries is pay-for-performance remuneration systems. It remains unclear what effects such programs may have in low- and middle-income countries as compared to high-income countries.

Our study has important implications for future research and policy. Future research is needed to address several important methodological limitations of existing studies. Many analyses were excluded from the review because they lacked a systematic approach to cataloging health system quality. Ideally, analyses should be comparative and should include a “counterfactual” in order to make causal claims about the effects of the particular benefits of providing services in one sector or the other. For example, social franchising to engage private providers in an organized regulatory system, which has been extensively piloted, has yet to be analyzed over the long term using outcome data and a comparison with commensurate investment in public sector development [88] . Studies also need to specify carefully the definition of the private and public sectors. When the private sector included unlicensed physicians, it was found to provide the majority of coverage for low-income groups, but when only licensed providers were included, the public sector was found to be the main source of healthcare provision in low- and middle-income countries. While some commentators report a higher number of absolute healthcare workers in the private sector, and a higher number of visits among the population to the private sector, these observation may be artifacts of improperly coding a large portion of private “providers” who are not actually qualified healthcare personnel, but rather drug store salespeople [1] , [5] . Most studies fail to capture the full scope of effects of reforms on the healthcare system, focusing on an isolated health system component. A reform may enhance public sector performance but compromise the market in the private sector, or vice versa. Standards may need to be developed for health system research for identifying what is “safe” and “effective” overall for patients across socioeconomic strata, just as we do for pharmaceutical safety and efficacy.

Some authors have highlighted the lack of regulatory infrastructure available in low- and middle-income countries to monitor the performance of private healthcare contractors [110] . Despite the lack of data about private sector performance, recent initiatives by the World Bank's International Finance Committee are underwriting the expansion of private sector services among low- and middle-income countries. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, the International Finance Committee has created a private equity fund to make 30 long-term investments in private health companies. These conflicts of interest pose a potential threat to the validity of World Bank–sponsored studies and raise the need for independent scrutiny.

Our review indicates that current data do not support claims that the private sector has been more efficient, accountable, or medically effective than the public sector [8] . The review also identifies several areas of focus for quality improvement. In the private sector, benefits may accrue from enhancing medical knowledge for appropriate diagnosis and disease management, drawing on specific quality improvement programs for continuing medical education that may serve as models [17] . It is also important to address conflicts of interest from physician-induced demand, particularly when prescribers are also drug store owners. Regulation and consumer education have been more successful than a reliance on clinical education alone in Pakistan and Bihar [17] . In the public sector, quality improvement may need to address incentives to perform at high standards among providers who may not feel threatened by a lack of business in the manner that private practitioners do. One proposed approach is to link provider compensation with results from patient outcomes, weighted by baseline disease risk in the patient population [111] . More generally, policy research needs to determine how targeted interventions might address these core weaknesses among both private and public delivery environments, including the lack of disclosure of outcome and performance data; as a measure of accountability, public transparency can be considered a vital sign of system performance (particularly for those systems receiving public subsidies; [112] ). While there is no clear definition of a “basic minimum dataset” for countries to capture health sector performance, we did notice several common themes in our data review. In many of the countries studied, surveillance of disease treatment outcomes among adults, and particularly noncommunicable disease, was found to be limited. Furthermore, we found further data gaps in health system performance around the issues of waiting times, financing changes (e.g., to further characterize the “competitive dynamics” we described), and outcomes of quality improvement efforts within each sector.

A critical challenge in years to come is how to address competitive dynamics between private and public realms, so that public sector facilities are not stripped of resources that are given to the private sector as subsidies, and so that the ability of public clinics and hospitals to retain skilled healthcare workers is not compromised, especially as both types of systems attempt to coexist in the healthcare delivery environment of low- and middle-income countries. These findings are consistent with earlier findings of an “infrastructure inequality trap” in some countries [103] , in which government funding is increasingly attracted towards private hospitals and away from the public sector hospitals. This occurs when private patients can afford to pay for greater infrastructure at private hospitals. Those hospitals then report greater “absorptive capacity” for future funds, and higher numbers of healthcare personnel, thereby attracting more funding from government institutions, shifting budgets away from public sector facilities that struggle to maintain human and physical infrastructure. Furthermore, we found evidence that many public–private initiatives involve public sector funding being dedicated to monitoring and preventing corruption in the private sector.

Overall, the data describing the performance of public and private systems remains highly limited and poor in quality, suggesting that further investigations should more systematically make data available to track the performance of both public and private care systems before further judgments are made concerning their relative merits and risks.

Supporting Information

Search strategy.

PRISMA checklist.

Abbreviations

The authors have no competing financial interests. SB, JA, SK and RP are employed at academic medical centers, which receive public sector research finances but also receive revenue through private sector fee-for-service medical transactions and private foundation grants. RP serves on the board of a nonprofit organization (Tiyatien Health) that provides health services in Liberia with approval from and in collaboration with the government and through receipt of private foundation funding, but has received no compensation for this role. SB and JA serve on the board of a nonprofit organization (Nyaya Health) that provides health services in rural Nepal using funds received from both private foundations and the Nepali government; they have also not received compensation for these roles.

No direct funding was received for this study. The authors were personally salaried by their institutions during the period of writing (though no specific salary was set aside or given for the writing of this paper).

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Can Medicare money protect doctors from abortion crimes? It worked before, desegregating hospitals

FILE - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Medicare bill in Independence, Mo., July 30, 1965. At right is former President Harry Truman. The Supreme Court’s pending Idaho abortion ruling may hinge on how federal spending power might protect doctors against a state’s criminal code. For guidance, the justices can look to the very beginning of Medicare in the 1960s, when the promise of federal funding finally persuaded hospitals in the Jim Crow South to desegregate. (AP Photo, File)

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ATLANTA (AP) — The Supreme Court’s pending Idaho abortion ruling may hinge on how federal spending power might protect doctors against a state’s criminal code. For guidance, the justices can look to the very beginning of Medicare in the 1960s, when the promise of federal funding finally persuaded hospitals in the Jim Crow South to desegregate.

In oral arguments for Idaho v. United States last month, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch raised questions about the Biden administration’s power to pull Medicare money from hospitals whose doctors won’t perform emergency abortions for fear of being prosecuted.

Idaho law currently threatens doctors with prison if prosecutors challenge their medical determination that an abortion was necessary to save a woman’s life. Idaho also criminalizes abortions to preserve a woman’s bodily functions, contrary to federal requirements for emergency care .

“How can you impose restrictions on what Idaho can criminalize simply because hospitals in Idaho have chosen to participate in Medicare?” asked Alito, who wrote the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. “I don’t understand how — how the theory works.”

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar countered that Idaho wants its hospitals to be able to accept Medicare money without federal conditions — like emergency abortion care in certain cases — “that are attached to those funds as an essential part of the bargain. And there is no precedent to support that outcome.”

In fact, using Medicare to impose federal will over states with contrary criminal codes is as old as the program itself. As Medicare prepared to begin paying for the care of elderly patients in July 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson used the offer of massive federal spending as a tool to finally end the most glaring racial discrimination in hospitals nationwide. It remains “one the most prominent and powerful cases of linking federal funding to other policy goals,” said University of Wisconsin professor Tom Oliver, an expert on health care policy changes.

Similarly, today’s “federal use of power is indirect and does not directly override state criminal statutes — it only makes compliance with a complete ban on abortions, even in emergencies threatening the life of the mother, very expensive for hospitals,” Oliver said.

Before Medicare money began flowing, despite passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and federal court rulings requiring desegregation, hospitals across the South were still conforming to criminal codes long used to enforce racial discrimination.

Black doctors were denied privileges at most hospitals. Black patients had to use segregated ambulances, wards, bathrooms and even blood supplies. Black people were turned away from emergency rooms reserved for white patients, leading to higher death rates in supposedly “separate but equal” facilities, according to Philip Lee, a Johnson administration official who helped implement Medicare’s rollout.

In Atlanta, only the public Grady Hospital treated both races but in separate wings known as the two Gradys. Even there, Black childbirths could only be scheduled on Wednesdays, according to Xernona Clayton, an aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

King’s cousin-in-law, Dr. Roy Bell, eventually won a 1962 federal lawsuit seeking to end segregation in Atlanta’s hospitals, but actual practice lagged behind federal law.

President Johnson was impatient for change and needed more grassroots support as Congress considered the Medicare and Medicaid Act. His aides urged Atlanta’s Black doctors to make some noise, and they did: Clayton brought them to lobby Congress, and they scored a White House visit.

That pressure reverberated back home: On June 1, 1965, one month before Johnson signed the act, Grady’s superintendent announced that the entire hospital would operate “on a non-racial basis, effective today.”

Grady was ahead of the curve. By March 1966, four months before the money started flowing, fewer than half the nation’s hospitals — and less than a quarter of them in the South — met federal standards outlawing racial discrimination, Lee wrote in 2015 in the Journal of the American Society on Aging.

Hospital inspections by Lee and other federal officials, more litigation and a come-to-Johnson meeting of health care executives at the White House led 95% of the 7,000 hospitals nationwide to comply within six months, enabling Johnson to declare that “there will be no second-class patients in our health-care institutions” nationwide, Lee wrote.

This fundamental principle of American federalism has extended to many other areas: States have updated antidiscrimination practices to qualify for education money and raised the legal drinking age to 21 to get highway funding, for example.

“The feds are saying, here’s a bunch of money — if you want it, abide by our conditions. If you don’t, don’t take it. It’s as simple as that,” said Eric Segall, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University. “No one who cares about the text and history of the Constitution” would seriously argue that federal spending power can’t be used as leverage this way, he argued.

But this federal power was challenged in a 2012 ruling against the Affordable Care Act, which initially would have withdrawn states from Medicaid if they declined federal funding to expand the program. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion held that this aspect of “Obamacare” amounted to unconstitutional coercion. Most states have volunteered to expand since then.

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