If childbirth is a miracle of nature, then the thriving, honestly run network of clinics and hospitals here is a human marvel, managed not by the government but by one of the nonprofit groups it has hired to run entire public health districts.
…These contracted services have allowed international donors and concerned governments to cut through dysfunctional bureaucracies - or work around them, and to improve health care and efficiency at modest cost.
Here in Cambodia, the nonprofit groups - all of them international - are instilling discipline and clarity of purpose in a health care system enfeebled by corruption, absenteeism and decades of war and upheaval. They have introduced incentives to draw Cambodia's own doctors and nurses back into the system. Patients, especially the poorest ones, have followed in droves.
That was Celia Dugger reporting in today’s NYTimes. This once again highlights the potential of innovative output-based approaches – which we frequently discuss here. For more, see the World Bank’s ‘Reaching the Poor’ report, this online discussion, the best book on the subject or more examples of OBA.
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