141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

278740
Can private healthcare setups shoulder the responsibility of delivering reproductive, maternal and child health services in semi urban areas? sharing experiences from India

Wednesday, November 6, 2013 : 8:50 AM - 9:10 AM

Himanshu Bhushan, Dr , Maternal Health Division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, New Delhi, India
Ajey Bhardwaj , Avni Health Foundation, Gurgaon, India
Sunanda Gupta, dr , Maternal and Reproductive Health, WHO India Country Office, New Delhi, 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.

Learning Areas:
Program planning

Learning Objectives:
Describes how to setup accreditation processes for Private Healthcare Providers in developing countries Discusses the accreditation tools used for identifying Private Healthcare Providers Design tools using our program details

Keywords: Challenges and Opportunities, Accreditation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As the Deputy Commissioner for maternal health, I lead the maternal health division initiatives in Government of India - Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for policy, program planning, and program implementation.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.