Improving access to high quality diagnostic services via Private-Public-Partnerships

Recently (2023), the World Bank and IFC (International Finance Corporation) launched a report on how PPPs (Private-Public-Partnerships) can help improve access to affordable diagnostic services in emerging markets.
In the report they share feedback from interviews with stakeholders of PPPS around the globe and lessons learned from case studies.

The essential role of clinical diagnostics

They restate the essential role of Clinical diagnostics:

• Diagnostic investigations provide excellent value for money
• Diagnostics allow for effective and timely treatment to avoid more complex, costly treatments like Antimicrobial resistance.

However global threats like the COVID-pandemic have shown there is still a widespread scarcity of diagnostic capacity and capability in many low and middle-income countries (LMICs) mainly due to deficiencies in

• Physical and operational infrastructure
• Shortfalls in the health workforce
• Insufficient systems to safeguard quality of services provided
• Corruption.

PPPs could be one of the approaches to support improvement in access to contemporary diagnostics

While highlighting the benefits of PPPs they also describe some risk mitigations to ensure successful Private-public partnerships.

Benefits of PPPs

1. Sharing expertise and quality norms of private sector
2. Focusing on required outputs to work with maximised efficiency
3. Attract local staff with the right experience and allow optimal knowledge transfer from private companies to local staff.
4. Spreading out the capital expenditure
5. Timely and within-budget project delivery
6. Tackle corruption by the transparent tendering approaches and contractually defined payment mechanisms.

Risk Mitigations for successful PPPs

1. Robust financial analysis and benchmarking are crucial in setting appropriate tariffs.
2. A good demand assessment to set up a budget control mechanism and evaluate potential and sustainability.
3. A strong political commitment as a single most important success factor, to ensure successful implementation.

The also share 3 success stories of PPPs around the globe, where PPPs created a better access to public health facilities by improving the availability of laboratory tests, high complexity tests and vital health services.

Praesens Care commitment

Praesens Care also believes in the power of innovative private public partnerships to enhance access to affordable diagnostics and care. We therefore opt for operating in a decentralized manner, deploying mobile platforms out of local hubs, staffed by local teams, to optimize the scarce qualified human resources and equipment, but with the support and operational expertise of the global Praesens team.

By offering support services including (tele)maintenance, comprehensive training packages, supply chain of reagents and spare parts, etc., we align the necessary components for optimal utilization of the assets and hence the sustainability of the operational model.

Furthermore, quality assurance systems, such as the certification of professionals and the accreditation of services also fall behind industry best practices in some countries. As such, the BIONEAR that is adherent to and accreditable for ISO15189 – Medical Labs, directly contributes to complying with the highest regulatory requirements and standards.

The combination of local empowerment and high quality diagnostics and care, are crucial for achieving more efficient outcomes than those that have historically been provided by public facilities.

Read the full article: https://www.ifc.org/content/dam/ifc/doc/2023/2023-PPP-Insights-Health.pdf

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