IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v55y2002i9p1579-1587.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Factors influencing private health providers' technical quality of care for acute respiratory infections among under-five children in rural West Bengal, India

Author

Listed:
  • Chakraborty, Sarbani
  • Frick, Kevin

Abstract

In many developing countries, private health practitioners provide a significant portion of curative care for diseases which are of public health importance. Currently, health sector reform efforts in these countries are fostering increased participation of private providers in the delivery of health services, including those of public health importance. Guaranteeing good technical quality of care is critical to the process. However, little is known about private providers' technical quality of care (disease management practices) and the factors influencing these services. The purpose of this study was to contribute information on this topic. The study was conducted among private providers in rural West Bengal, India and focused on providers' disease management practices for acute respiratory infections (ARI) among under-five children. World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for ARI case management were used as the expected standard of care. Observations of patient-provider encounters and interviews with the providers and mothers were the main sources of data. The study found that private health providers in rural West Bengal have inadequate technical quality of care. The problem was related both to low levels of performance (limited potential) and inconsistency in performance (within-provider variation). Limited potential for good technical quality for ARI among the providers was related to lack of knowledge (technical incompetence). One of the important factors influencing within-provider variation was patient load. Since rural private providers operate on a fee-for-service payment system, there are incentives related to seeing many patients. The study concluded that to bring about sustainable improvements in private providers' ARI disease management practices, training programs and interventions that improved compliance were necessary.

Suggested Citation

  • Chakraborty, Sarbani & Frick, Kevin, 2002. "Factors influencing private health providers' technical quality of care for acute respiratory infections among under-five children in rural West Bengal, India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(9), pages 1579-1587, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:55:y:2002:i:9:p:1579-1587
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(01)00292-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sheikh, Kabir & Porter, John, 2010. "Discursive gaps in the implementation of public health policy guidelines in India: The case of HIV testing," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(11), pages 2005-2013, December.
    2. George, Asha & Iyer, Aditi, 2013. "Unfree markets: Socially embedded informal health providers in northern Karnataka, India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 297-304.
    3. Joanne Yoong & Nicholas Burger & Connor Spreng & Neeraj Sood, 2010. "Private Sector Participation and Health System Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(10), pages 1-9, October.
    4. Neeraj Sood & Nicholas Burger & Joanne Yoong & Dan Kopf & Connor Spreng, 2011. "Firm-Level Perspectives on Public Sector Engagement with Private Healthcare Providers: Survey Evidence from Ghana and Kenya," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-12, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:55:y:2002:i:9:p:1579-1587. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.