| Purpose: This study aims to systematically review and investigate the benefits and challenges strategic purchasing implementation in health systems and suggests a basis for improving their performance.
Method: This is a systematic review in which electronic databases and search engines—including PubMed, Springer, OvidSP, ProQuest, Google scholar and Scopus, along with related journals, library, and gray literature—were searched for related articles from 1990 to 2015
independently completed all steps of the research. Quality assessment
of all included articles for final review was done using related checklists.
Results: 2049 articles identified through searching databases, which
were refined to 23 final articles. Based on the result of this study, the
benefits of strategic purchasing implementation in health systems
were reported as higher quality, higher efficiency, better value for
money (VfM), while high administrative costs, issues in priority setting,
a need for accurate information and political issues were among the
main challenges and disadvantages.
Conclusion: active purchasing can be a healthy useful option for health systems to adequately reach health system objectives, but challenges about functions and especially stewardship of health
system should not be neglected. Updates were added to the searches if found. Search strategies included
the combination of two sets of keywords (“purchasing,” “contracting” OR “commissioning” OR “buying” OR “procurement”) with (“strategic” OR “active” OR “proactive”). Articles in English or Farsi/Persian, which
discussed benefits and challenges of strategic purchasing in a health
context, were eligible to be included in the study. Two researchers |