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Developing effective purchaser & provider organisations

Within a strategic purchasing framework, continuous shifts in needs, demands, funding
priorities, treatment options, medicines, and individual and provider behaviours need to be
anticipated. This necessitates strategic purchasing agencies to respond to changing
contexts and dynamics of the health system promptly and appropriately to manage
the alignment and dynamics of various changing factors (WHO, 2017b).
Accountability and greater transparency are important for both purchaser and provider;
therefore, expectations for each participating stakeholder and health system goals should be
made explicit. However, stakeholders and a review of PPP programmes have reported
unclear standardisation of the private sector services with services in the public sector
(Lau & Fong, 2021).

Box 3.9

Audit Review on Hospital Authority’s public-private
partnership programmes

Released: 28 March 2012

Selected recommendations:
• Devise a mechanism to assess the overall development of PPP
programmes and consolidate experience
• Monitor the patients and healthcare providers’ take-up and drop-out rates
while taking follow-up actions
• Establish a fee-setting framework, thoroughly test market sensitivity and
improve the cost-effectiveness of PPP programmes
• Improve risk management with private service providers and step up the
monitoring of service delivery
• Further promote the use of electronic records and platforms to enhance
cross-sectoral collaboration
• FHB to stipulate detailed terms for conducting independent evaluation on
PPP programmes in good time
• HA and FHB to develop more holistic performance indicators instead of
being solely output-driven

Source: Audit Commission of the HKSARG, 2012

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