Public-private partnerships : a qualitative approach to prospects for pharmacy in the South African health care environment / Johan Christiaan Lamprecht
BACKGROUND: Powerful public-private partnerships (PPPs) can only be established if the partners areable to deal with complexity. Such partnerships may serve to stimulate local communityand economic development. Thus, it may maximise the effectiveness of local groupsand resources in meeting the needs for rebuilding a community through a partnershiprepresentative of the public and private sectors. A problem that exists in South Africa, isthe uneven distribution of population ratios dependent on public and private sectorhealth care service delivery, in relation to the proportion of pharmaceutical serviceproviders in the different sectors.OBJECTIVE: The main objectives of this qualitative research investigation were to examine theprospects for PPP development in the pharmaceutical sector of South Africa as well asto explore the possibilities of a proposition for a proposed generic public-privatepartnership model to be managed and used in the pharmaceutical sector of SouthAfrica.METHOD: The study comprises of the exploration of the research questions by means of aqualitative research design. The study design implicated a balance between the in-depthliterature study and a qualitative research process. The researcher employed agrounded theory approach to collect and analyse the data. Data collection representedthe identifiable role players and opinion formulators in the South African health caresector. By following a combination of the various qualitative sampling methods andtechniques, a total of 38 (n=38) interviews were conducted. The data collected from theinterviewees and from the literature study were integrated and analysed by making useof computer assisted data analysis.SETTING: The researcher selected interviewees from the South African health care sector. Theinterviews included role players in the pharmaceutical sector in both the public andprivate sectors. The interviewees further represented eight different spheres of thepharmaceutical setting in South Africa.KEY FINDINGS: The investigation identified a range of prospects for PPP development in South Africaand these were reported in terms of views, expectations and scope for success. Themanagement elements for developing and sustaining joint ventures between the publicand private sectors were identified and a proposition was formulated in theory to serveas a proposed generic PPP model (PGM) in the pharmaceutical sector for the SouthAfrican health care milieu.CONCLUSIONThe exploratory qualitative investigation surfaced the various facets of the complexity ofPPPs. The investigation concluded that several barriers, such as competition andmarket entry disparities between the macro and micro level pharmaceutical entities,which impede PPP development, affected the prospects for PPP development in SouthAfrica. The South African legislation, South African Treasury guidelines, regulations andthe views of the SA Competition Commission need transformation to accommodateboth the micro and macro level pharmaceutical service providers in the formation ofPPPs. Capacity building within the sphere of pharmaceutical service delivery to thebigger population of South Africa may become sustainable on removal of these barriers.A series of recommendations were presented and several critical issues in need ofsupplementary research, have been identified.
Year of publication: |
2007
|
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Authors: | Lamprecht, Johan Christiaan |
Subject: | Public-private partnerships | Partnerships | Public sector | Private sector | Health care | Pharmaceutical services | Prospects | Model | Capacity |
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