The role of contractual arrangements in improving health sector ...

Egypt
Facilities scoring 50%–80% will be accredited for one year, and an improvement plan will be
set to be followed up by the technical support team.
Facilities scoring more than 80% will be accredited for two years with continuous follow-up by
the technical support team for two years. After this, the facility must be re-accredited and
will not be permitted to achieve less than 80% in subsequent assessments.
What kind of procedures followed for providers not adhering to quality standards?
The Family Health Fund has the right to break the contract with any contracted facility,
even fully accredited, if under any circumstances the facility does not follow or abide by the
stated performance indicators. See item 1 of the contract (Annex 1).
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The political environment is supportive of contractual arrangements in the health sector.
The Ministry of Health and Population continues to highlight the need for partnership
between public and private sectors, and ministerial decrees have been issued to help
emphasize the role of the Family Health Fund in supporting the contractual arrangements with
private and nongovernmental organization providers.
The Ministry of Health and Population is responsible for the health and welfare of the
Egyptian population and is committed to carrying out this obligation. Indeed, it may be that
the partial privatization process under way in other areas of the public sector will result in
making available greater government resources and capacity to strengthen the social sectors
such as health care. Instead of privatization, the Egyptian health sector reform programme
needs to strengthen the private health care sector in order to support those set goals and
priorities in an effort to adhere to universally accepted standards of quality of care in Egypt.
Currently, the role of the Family Health Fund is developing and moving towards
purchasing health care services at the level of the health district. The Family Health Fund is in
the process of contracting with the District Provider Organization (DPO) in parallel to
contracting directly with family health facilities. The Family Health Fund will pay a global
budget to the DPO according to the health needs assessment of the population, pending the
negotiations between the two parties of the contract, putting in consideration the age
distribution and other risk factors of roster population. The DPO will use different payment
mechanisms (per capita, fee for service, etc) to compensate the facility.
The Family Health Fund, acting on behalf of the district population, is supporting its
position in the contractual agreement with the private or nongovernmental organization
provider as a single purchaser. The Family Health Fund needs to use this opportunity to
design a dynamic marketing campaign to promote the concept of contractual agreement with
the private and nongovernmental organization sector.
As the next step, the Family Health Fund needs to expand its contracting with the
private sector to a much larger scale, especially outside the pilot governorates, in urban
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