LAS ALIANZAS ESTRATÉGICAS COMO ALTERNATIVA PARA EL FUNCIONAMIENTO DE LOS SERVICIOS DE SALUD EN LAS EMPRESAS SOCIALES DEL ESTADO (Article published in Spanish)

Abstract

This article is the result of one of the projects conducted by the research team at the Department of Administrative and Economic Sciences at ICESI University on the issues of "Public Policies and their Economic and Fiscal Effects" and "Human Capital ". The purpose of this paper was to look into the experience of the San José Hospital located in Popayan, Colombia, with respect to the establishment and operation of a strategic alliance with Renal Therapy Service, a multinational subsidiary of Baxter International Corporation. Such an alliance enabled a public hospital with numerous deficiencies, which resulted from its legal and bureaucratic structure, difficult relations with the workers´ union, and financial limitation, to provide patients suffering from kidney deficiency with an essential assistance service that calls for high technology and performance to ensure improvement of their standards of living. Having thoroughly reviewed the conditions that made the alliance possible, an assessment was made of the medical and financial results of the alliance in its first five (5) years of operation. It was found that, without this alliance, patients living in Popayan and its surrounding areas would not have been able to benefit from this good quality service in a timely fashion, which would have led to an increased morbidity rate.