Private sector delivery of health services in developing countries: a mixed-methods study on quality assurance in social franchises

摘要

BackgroundAcross the developing world health care services are most often delivered in the private sector and social franchising has emerged, over the past decade, as an increasingly popular method of private sector health care delivery. Social franchising aims to strengthen business practices through economies of scale: branding clinics and purchasing drugs in bulk at wholesale prices. While quality is one of the established goals of social franchising, there is no published documentation of how quality levels might be set in the context of franchised private providers, nor what quality assurance measures can or should exist within social franchises. The aim of this study was to better understand the quality assurance systems currently utilized in social franchises, and to determine if there are shared standards for practice or quality outcomes that exist across programs.