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Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study

Strategic purchasing is a way of ensuring that the healthcare interventions that are provided, improves the health systems responsiveness. Contracting for health services, as a component of strategic purchasing, has been promoted as an important mechanism to improve the efficiency of resource use, q...

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Main Author: Pillay, Ravi
Other Authors: Honda, Ayako
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Health Economics Unit 2015
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access_status_str Open Access
author Pillay, Ravi
author2 Honda, Ayako
author_browse Honda, Ayako
Pillay, Ravi
author_facet Honda, Ayako
Pillay, Ravi
author_sort Pillay, Ravi
collection Thesis
description Strategic purchasing is a way of ensuring that the healthcare interventions that are provided, improves the health systems responsiveness. Contracting for health services, as a component of strategic purchasing, has been promoted as an important mechanism to improve the efficiency of resource use, quality in health care service provision and increase accountability, all of which contribute towards improving health system performance. Over the past two decades, many countries have adopted contracting as a mechanism to positively impact the performance of the health system. However, despite the increasing interest and experimentation with contracting as a way to improve health systems, the results remain controversial. Within South Africa's private healthcare market, medical schemes represent the largest source of private healthcare funding. Given the rate of increase of medical inflation within the South African private healthcare market, there is an absolute need for medical schemes to become more strategic in their purchasing decisions. This dissertation aims to address the gaps identified in the contracting literature by providing empirical evidence from an evaluation of a contractual agreement between a healthcare financing agency, medical scheme, and a managed care organisation in the private health sector in South Africa for the provision of a back rehabilitation programme to reduce the cost of back surgeries. The dissertation also attempts to formulate key learnings that will inform future policies regarding contracting for healthcare services within the private and public health sector in South Africa.
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provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
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spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/15681 Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study Pillay, Ravi Honda, Ayako Health Economics Strategic purchasing is a way of ensuring that the healthcare interventions that are provided, improves the health systems responsiveness. Contracting for health services, as a component of strategic purchasing, has been promoted as an important mechanism to improve the efficiency of resource use, quality in health care service provision and increase accountability, all of which contribute towards improving health system performance. Over the past two decades, many countries have adopted contracting as a mechanism to positively impact the performance of the health system. However, despite the increasing interest and experimentation with contracting as a way to improve health systems, the results remain controversial. Within South Africa's private healthcare market, medical schemes represent the largest source of private healthcare funding. Given the rate of increase of medical inflation within the South African private healthcare market, there is an absolute need for medical schemes to become more strategic in their purchasing decisions. This dissertation aims to address the gaps identified in the contracting literature by providing empirical evidence from an evaluation of a contractual agreement between a healthcare financing agency, medical scheme, and a managed care organisation in the private health sector in South Africa for the provision of a back rehabilitation programme to reduce the cost of back surgeries. The dissertation also attempts to formulate key learnings that will inform future policies regarding contracting for healthcare services within the private and public health sector in South Africa. 2015-12-08T11:39:30Z 2015-12-08T11:39:30Z 2015 Master Thesis Masters MPH http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15681 eng application/pdf Health Economics Unit Faculty of Health Sciences University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Health Economics
Pillay, Ravi
Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study
title_full Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study
title_fullStr Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study
title_full_unstemmed Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study
title_short Value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services : a South African case study
title_sort value of contracting as an active purchasing mechanism of healthcare services a south african case study
topic Health Economics
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15681
work_keys_str_mv AT pillayravi valueofcontractingasanactivepurchasingmechanismofhealthcareservicesasouthafricancasestudy