EDITORIALS
Public-private partnerships in health: time for evidence-based policies
Correspondence to:
Professor Rifat A Atun, Imperial College London, UK; r.atun@imperial.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In the past two decades, as with other European countries, the United Kingdom has experienced a number of profound changes in financing and institutional arrangements in its health systems, characterised by increased emphasis on mixed financing, with greater use of private funding, reduced reliance on hierarchies for decision-making in favour of flatter management arrangements, progressive expansion of markets and market-like mechanisms for resource allocation, and novel public-private relationships—loosely referred to as public-private partnerships. In practice, the scope and extent of these "partnerships" greatly vary in relation to financing and delivery of healthcare services. There is increased use of private funding for capital projects in the NHS, along with a growth of supplementary voluntary insurance and out-of-pocket payments by citizens. In service delivery, approaches to public-private partnerships have ranged from (i) privatisation of healthcare services previously managed by local or central government (involving the sale or transfer of assets—for example, primary
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