Operationalisation, evaluation and governance in health and social care procurement
Public procurement is normally carried out through a tender procedure where price is the dominant evaluation criterion. There is currently a lack of understanding of how quality can be operationalized and evaluated in health and social care in a procurement situation.
There is also a lack of a common picture of how to proceed when actually including quality criteria in the procurement process.
The aim of the project is to contribute to increased knowledge about the operationalization, evaluation and management of quality in the procurement of health care and especially the development of quality criteria that are easy to apply for both contracting entities and health care service providers, based on the situation of both patients and health care workers.
The research questions in this project highlight the operationalization of quality, how and to what extent quality is evaluated, the impact of the use of quality criteria on patients and care workers, and how the whole process can be made more efficient and better for patients and care workers.
We illustrate this through quantitative and qualitative studies of procurement documentation and through qualitative studies in the form of interviews and observations with people involved in the procurement process. Although there is currently research on service quality and the use of quality criteria, there is a need for knowledge about how such criteria can be understood in a context where a service is contracted between two parties but a third party, i.e. the care recipient/patient, is to receive the service. There is a particular need to examine how quality is operationalized, evaluated and monitored in this context. We believe that by studying quality in the procurement of health and social care, we can contribute to a better understanding of the concept of quality and its content for welfare organizations.
In addition to Luleå University of Technology, the project team includes Chalmers and Karlstad University. The project started January 1, 2014 and runs until December 31, 2016. It is funded by Forte - the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.
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