Exposure of Public Sector with the Quasi-market Through Outsourcing: A Case Study in Iran

Background: Outsourcing as an efficiency-oriented approach was introduced to elevate productivity in the public sector. This strategy as a public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement was coined to increase efficiency and quality in public organizations. Objectives: In this study, we aimed to investigate the quantity of applying common outsourcing models at Bushehr University of Medical Sciences (BUMS). Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2020 at BUMS. The research population was all BUMS deputies, hospitals, and health networks. This study was carried out in four stages, including a literature review, the construction of a checklist, the quality assurance of gathered data, and the attribution of outsourced services to the extracted models. Descriptive indices were calculated using SPSS software version 8. Results: Results showed a total of seven various outsourcing models on which 189 cases of services had been outsourced. Of the 189 cases, 108 were clinical, and the rest were non-clinical. Among the outsourcing models, the service purchasing model was the most typically used, and leases and divestitures were the two least used models. Conclusions: Although various outsourcing models are available, they have been disproportionately utilized, showing that to spread the domain of penetration of this strategy, we need to tackle the obstacles ahead of its successful implementation. Increasing the knowledge of managers could be an effective solution. Furthermore, capacity–building toward raising the number of private healthcare providers could facilitate the implementation of an outsourcing policy.