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Using financing to motivate a for‐profit health care provider to deliver family planning services: Is it a cost‐effective intervention? A study of AAR health services in Kenya
Author(s) -
Chee Grace
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
the international journal of health planning and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1099-1751
pISSN - 0749-6753
DOI - 10.1002/hpm.710
Subject(s) - business , incentive , psychological intervention , service provider , intervention (counseling) , actuarial science , finance , public economics , marketing , nursing , economics , medicine , service (business) , microeconomics
Despite much discussion of the role of private health care providers, there are no tried and tested models for supporting for‐profit providers in ways that produce cost‐effective public health outcomes. This paper examines the cost effectiveness of using a loan mechanism to motivate a for‐profit provider to deliver family planning services. The intervention examined directly resulted in a private provider delivering family planning services, however, it did not create a long‐term financial incentive for the private provider to promote the use of family planning. The cost effectiveness of this intervention is analysed using a methodology that captures long term sustainability of the intervention within a traditional family planning outcome measure, such as couple years protection (CYP), by discounting future expected CYPs. Depending on the method for analysing costs and assumptions regarding future CYPs, this intervention produced family planning outcomes at no or very low cost ($0–$4.11 per CYP). The analysis demonstrates that innovative family planning interventions with private providers should be considered as they can be more cost effective than traditional programmes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.