ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the functions and evaluands of evaluation in two typical, institutionally different types of collaborative arrangements between public and private partners: contracting out (with triangular arrangements with a third-party payer as a special case) and the pooling of efforts and resources. The basic issue is to gain a better understanding of the conditions for, and characteristics of, evaluation in these types of organizational collaboration and to establish how they differ from the situation in a traditional comprehensive, hierarchical public agency. The ambition is more modest: to identify some alternative functions of evaluation and search for evidence of whether and how these have been effected in specific instances of "new" forms of collaboration. Aspects of evaluation (evaluands) include medical quality, service quality, cost-effectiveness, customer and employee satisfaction, innovative behavior, and collaboration with other care providers. The creation of internal markets, as well as contracting out, thus splits the integrated public service organization into two distinct functions: purchaser and provider.
