Measure corruption risk in the public hospital network: an empirical index-based approach
Sebastián Jaén et al.
What the paper says
Corruption, as an embedded and systemic force within health systems, is one of the most significant barriers to accessing and ensuring the quality of health services. The health sector, in all its forms and in all countries, is particularly vulnerable to abuse. Prevention becomes possible with the establishment of an institutional mechanism capable of identifying transactions with a high risk of corruption. This article introduces an innovative approach that measures the risk of corruption in a developing country’s public hospital network. The study explores the extent to which corruption risk indicators serve as effective early-warning tools for strengthening transparency and governance in public health systems. The methodology combines indicators into an index designed to assess how exposed a given public hospital is to corruption. Risk is measured across key hospital management processes: medical billing, debt management, resource allocation (expenditure), and contract management. The analysis measured corruption risk indexes for 945 Colombian public hospitals (97% of the total) during a three-year period. The proposed methodology highlights that discretionary power in contract allocation and debt management is the main driver of corruption risk. The study also found a positive correlation between hospital remoteness and exposure to corruption risk.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.