Internal and External Anti-corruption Solutions in Healthcare Organizations: A Scoping Review

Corruption means abusing the position and power delegated for personal gain, which undermines the performance of the organization and the quality of services provided to patients. The aim of this study was to identify and extract internal and external anti-corruption strategies in healthcare organizations.

Information sources and selected methods for study: 

This scoping review was performed on the published documents (57 items) until September 5, 2020. Search was conducted in English databases including PubMed, Web of Sciences and Scopus and also in Persian ones including SID and Magiran. There was also a manual search for anti-corruption strategies in relevant international organizations. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically using MaxQDA 10 software.

57 studies and reports were selected to find strategies to fight corruption. The three main areas of solutions were identified as executive, legislative and judiciary powers. 16 strategies were extracted in the fields of executive (7 cases), legislative (5 cases) and judiciary (4 cases). Solutions regarding the Ministry of Health were categorized into 6 building blocks of health systems, including leadership / governance, service delivery, financing, health workforce, medical products, vaccines, technology, and the health information system.

Fighting corruption in healthcare organizations requires using a set of intra-sectoral and extra-sectoral solutions, and in this regard, policy-makers need to design and implement practical strategies based on the evidence presented in areas prone to corruption.