Evaluating the quality of nursing care in the context of a comparison of contracted out South African hospitals
Abstract
This paper evaluates quality of nursing care in the context of an evaluation of the practice of contracting out district hospital services in South Africa. Three contractor hospitals, run by a private company and paid by public purchasers to provide district hospital care to a rural catchment population, were matched with three adjacent public hospitals and three private hospitals serving largely insured patients. Quality of nursing care was evaluated using a survey instrument to evaluate nursing care against a set of pre-defined criteria and standards, and by a subjective evaluation. The evaluation highlighted some important and consistent differences in the quality of nursing care between public, contractor and private hospital groups, with the contractor hospitals generally superior to the public hospitals, and the private hospitals not surprisingly demonstrating highest levels of nursing quality.
Citation
Broomberg, J.; Mills, A. Evaluating the quality of nursing care in the context of a comparison of contracted out South African hospitals. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK (2004) 27 pp. [HEFP working paper 03/04]
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