The private sector, universal health coverage and primary health care
Overview
This document focuses on the first component of primary health care and provides an overview of the role of the private sector in health systems in terms of providing goods and health services, particularly in primary care. It describes ways to harness the efforts of all health services, both public and private, to achieve universal health coverage, including efforts focused on primary health care.
The private sector (both for-profit and not-for-profit) plays an important role in most of the world’s health systems. Its role is expanding in many countries. The private sector provides a mix of goods and services including: direct provision of health services (the focus of this document), medicines and medical products, financial products, training for the health workforce, information technology, infrastructure and support services (e.g. health facility management). As a result, most countries have “mixed health systems”—where a mix of public and private providers deliver health-related goods and services. The governance arrangements deployed to steer mixed delivery differ greatly from those used to manage systems that exclusively rely on public services.
