Public/private sector mix for health care

RESUMO

"A baseline survey was carried out in order to establish the current status of the public/private mix in health care services in Zimbabwe. The findings were 1. the current centralised budgetary and financing structures are not conducive to effective and efficient allocation of scarce financial resources. 2. the use of the ""incremental"" budgeting system which does not take into account important parameters like diseases types and patterns and demographic factors (population size; structure and distribution) leads to deficient and inequitable distribution of resources across the provinces. 3. the policy of free health services for those who earn below a given income threshold has not achieved the intended created implementation problems especially as regards the screaning process of who should pay and who should not. Running two parallel systems where some people pay for health services and others do not has also created inefficient problems; and is administratively expensive to run. 4. the public sector is indirectly subsidizing the private sector in some way which should not be the case e.g private patients occupying beds in public institutions are paying fees which are below actual costs; most doctors trained using public funds desert the public sector before they have served long enough to satisfy government investment in them; tax rebates on health insurance..."