Analysis on Barriers to Development of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in Health Sector of Pakistan: Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach

Abstract

Introduction: In the recent years, public-private partnership (PPP) has become one of the most commonly used mechanisms with regards to providing healthcare services in various countries, and the ventures have gone successful. Despite of many accomplishments, still there are many challenges to development of PPP projects in the health care sector of Pakistan. Purpose: Current research was conducted to identify the most critical barriers in public-private partnerships in health sector of Pakistan using the Analytic hierarchy process technique. Methods: Based on the literature review and responses of interviewees, AHP model was developed. The model was developed with five main criteria barriers and twenty-one sub-criteria barriers. All the barriers were analyzed through pairwise comparisons to calculate relative weights and rankings as per experts’ evaluations. Results: A total of fourteen participants’ responses were analyzed and their relative weights were calculated. The criteria ranking was evaluated from the most influential to the least influential as follows: governance and regulatory barriers (w=0.4633), financial barriers (w=0.2465), socio-cultural barriers (w=0.1534), political barriers (w=0.0898), and technical and legal barriers (w=0.0471). Conclusion: Based on the results, it is concluded that decision-makers/policy-makers may consider the most influential barriers and their ranking while formulating the policies to develop PPPs in the healthcare sector Pakistan. After, eliminating the critical barriers, the policies and strategies may become more effective and efficient.