ABSTRACT
Since 1992 the importance of private sector involvement in the delivery of health services has been highlighted in successive plan documents, committee and commission reports of the central government and by bilateral and multilateral donor agencies. During the past decade, several state governments in India have experimented with encouraging private sector involvement in health care. In the initial stages, the most common forms of private sector involvement have been to establish medical colleges, build super-specialty hospitals through tax concessions and subsidized land, to waive taxes or provide concessions for the import of medical equipment, to outsource ancillary services in hospitals, to procure medicine and drugs through private vendors, to computerize medical records and to engage ambulance operators.
