Can private healthcare setups shoulder the responsibility of delivering reproductive, maternal and child health services in semi urban areas? sharing experiences from India

The private health sector presents many unparalleled opportunities to improve access and coverage of services that are critically needed to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals. The involvement of the private sector can make the difference between success and failure of efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality. A key challenge in India (and many countries) is to develop a standardized tool that can help develop and maintain a database of all private sector healthcare providers (PHPs). This is all the more difficult given the diversity, quality and range of services offered by the PHP's in India. Results of the study done for 121 PHPs, spread across 2 States validated the 2 tools and showed that majority of PHPs met 80-95% of the criteria for inclusion in the database. A key recommendation was for the Government to create awareness for the use of the standardized accreditation tool. Based on the information gathered the next step included forging partnerships with PHP's to deliver quality services is rural India. A key challenge described is the finalization of the criteria for inclusion so as to be able to capture and reflect the range and diversity of the PHPs in a specific area. An important lesson was to divide the criteria into non-negotiable and desirable elements and all PHP's meeting the non-negotiables should be involved in service delivery. The key lessons learnt from this process are critical to inform public private partnerships in developing countries to address maternal health issues.