Public Purchaser-Private Provider Contracting for Health Services: Examples from Latin America and the Caribbean

The report presents examples to illustrate many of the key issues regarding health care contracting. This study discusses 27 examples of contracting with the private sector in Latin America and the Caribbean. The examples cover three types of services and target population: 11 are broadly-defined services for the entire population (e.g. outpatient services by private hospitals in Brazil); 8 are specific services for the entire population (e.g. high-tech services -heart surgery, kidney transplants, hip replacements, etc.- by private units in Uruguay); and 8 are specific services for a target population (e.g. a program to reduce child malnutrition in Honduras). In addition to its analysis of the cases, the study has generated a publicly available electronic database that can be corrected, updated, and expanded.