4.1 About This Step
A local government hoping to establish a public-private partnership (PPP) in hospital management will most likely need to develop a marketing and promotion plan. In Step 4, the organization wants to find ways to convince its stakeholders to support public health goals through innovative interventions such as the establishment of a PPP. They need to rally the people behind their plans to be able to ensure successful implementation.
This step will allow the organization to position the PPP enterprise not as the product itself but as an effective way to pursue an objective (that is, achieving better health care for the people). Therefore, the positioning of the social marketing component of the PPP enterprise requires a more practical approach that focuses on the end product and its benefits, which is the provision of better and efficient health services to the general community. The insights in Box 4 are good starting points in crafting a social marketing plan.
| Box 4: Communicating about Public-Private Partnerships in Health What do we want to communicate? Experts agree that public-private partnerships (PPPs) in health are better implemented by not selling the partnership itself. The concept of PPP is communicated only to the internal groups or public of participating government agencies, prospective private sector partners, and local government implementers. For the general public who will benefit from PPPs in health, it is the selling of the improved health services that is most important. |
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| The long-term goal of behavior change-the changing of the mind-set of the general public that is desired by program managers-is therefore seen to be at the end of a spectrum of outcomes of the social marketing component, with the caveat that the success of any PPP enterprise should also be measured by how it has effectively changed the behaviors of its intended beneficiaries (e.g., people patronizing the PPP hospital because they prefer its services and value its impact on their lives). This is the ideal situation, where the general community patronizes the health services provided through PPPs in whatever form and modality they have (e.g., even if they result in slightly higher costs). The costs of health services, perceived by the masses (particularly indigents) as "free," are actually being subsidized by the national government through social health insurance systems and other local and national programs. This should be communicated to the masses in understandable terms to disabuse the notion that health services for the poor are forms of "dole-out" programs. In this context, proponents of PPPs in health, who tend to be the catalysts and designers of the program, should be presented as champions of improved and more efficient health services rather than reformists of the current system through a so-called partnership with the private sector. PPPs in health should be seen as the means for better and efficient health services rather than an end itself. This approach tends to defocus the public's incorrect perception that PPP is "privatization" and, therefore, would lead to higher costs of services. It also deflects the notion that government is abrogating its responsibilities to provide health services to the community to the private sector. | |
