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April 2003, Vol 93, No. 4 | American Journal of Public Health 520
© 2003 American Public Health Association

LETTER

MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF PRIVATIZATION

J. Rush Pierce, Jr, MD and Claudia P. Blackburn, RNC, MPH

J. Rush Pierce Jr, is the Health Authority for the Amarillo Bi-City-County Health District, Amarillo, Tex. Claudia P. Blackburn is with the City of Amarillo Department of Public Health.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to J. Rush Pierce Jr, MD, P.O. Box 1971, Amarillo, TX 79105-1971 (e-mail: jrpiercejr{at}imaamarillo.com).

We read with interest the brief by Keane, Marx, and Ricci, summarizing the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) study of privatization in local health departments.1 In 1996, the sale of our community’s public hospital to a for-profit corporation privatized most medical services for the poor. At that time, local political events forced the separation of our community’s indigent care programs from other public health functions, and our local health department stopped providing most personal health services and immunizations.2

Our community is attempting to understand the effects of privatization on some of the health care activities that were privatized in 1996. The City of Amarillo Department of Public Health has recently assessed childhood immunization rates and compared them with historic rates before privatization of our immunization programs. Vaccination coverage in local children, as defined and measured in the Texas Immunization Survey, increased from 70% in 1996 to 72% in 2000. During this same period of time, Texas coverage increased from 68% to 70%.3 Thus, it appears that childhood immunization rates after privatization increased in our community by the same margin as in the rest of the state.

We are interested in the experience of other local health departments in assessing the effects of the privatization of health care activities that they previously performed. We urge NACCHO and other national leaders in public health to develop recommendations for communities attempting to understand the effects of privatization of health care activities that were previously publicly delivered.

References

1. Keane C, Marx J, Ricci E. Services privatized in local health departments: a national survey of practices and perspectives. Am J Public Health.2002;92:1250–1254.[Free Full Text]

2. Pierce JR Jr, Blackburn CP. The transformation of a local health department. Public Health Rep. 1998;113:152–159.[ISI][Medline]

3. Espinoza R, Roche RA. Findings from the 2000 Texas Immunization Survey (TIS). Texas Department of Health Web site. September 21, 2001. Available at: http://www.tdh.state.tx.us/immunize/tis.htm. Accessed October 26, 2002.





This Article
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Google Scholar
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Right arrow Articles by Pierce, J. R., Jr
Right arrow Articles by Blackburn, C. P.
Related Collections
Right arrow Community Health
Right arrow Health Administration
Right arrow Other Health Service Delivery

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