Service quality on three management levels

Quality and legal aspects in public care procurement

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to assess the applicability of care quality concepts as contract award criteria for public procurement of health and social care, using the case of Sweden.

Design/methodology/approach

– Based on a literature review, European and Swedish legal texts, government regulations as well as 26 Swedish court review cases concerning care procurement have been analysed.

Findings

– Methods used for assessing care quality are seldom useful for predicting the quality to be delivered by a potential contractor. Legal principles of transparency and equal treatment of tenderers make it necessary to apply strict requirements for verification.

Research limitations/implications

– Results refer primarily to a Swedish context but could be applicable throughout the EU. Further studies of relations between award criteria and public/private collaborative practices for improving care quality during contractual periods are desirable.

Practical implications

– Local and regional procurement officials should benefit from a better understanding of how quality criteria should be designed and applied to the award procedures for care contracts. Care providers in the private sector would also be able to develop their quality strategies and present their abilities more efficiently when tendering for public contracts.

Social implications

– Issues of quality of health and social care are of obvious importance for social sustainability. Public awareness of care quality problems is evident and often a cause of media concern.

Originality/value

– This investigation pinpoints the difference between traditional care quality thinking and the legal principles underlying contract award in public procurement of care services.

Designing appropriate contracts for achieving efficient winter road and railway maintenance with high performance quality

Purpose

– For a long time, the winter maintenance of the Swedish road and railway network had been performed in-house by Swedish Transport Administration, Swedish local authorities i.e. municipalities and Stockholm public transport. During the last 15 years the winter operation and maintenance of these state infrastructures have been performed by public procurement and contracting from independent contractors, where in practice the lowest price is the dominating selection criteria. The aim of this paper is to investigate and identify how these contracts are designed and how satisfied the parties are with the contract and the quality of the performed work during the winter and point our directions for improvement.

Design/methodology/approach

– The study was conducted by a literature review and followed by semi-structured interviews and electronic questionnaire.

Findings

– The results of the study which are based on the interviews and the online questionnaire show that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the contracts among both clients and contractors.

Practical implications

– The article prepares a basis showing how a contract affects the quality of the performed winter road and railway maintenance services.

Originality/value

– The findings lead to a number of suggestions about how to improve the contracts, e.g. having a separate winter maintenance contract to increase the quality of performed winter maintenance measures, a more partnering-like structure where consultations and adjustment can be made during the contract period. A partnering structure also makes it less important to get all the details right in the contract.