Design and implementation of mitigation plans (anti-corruption tools and measures)
The data revealed wide disparities in product prices across the city’s hospitals. It also showed that the average price paid fell dramatically in the first months of the experiment. This suggested that the dissemination of price information was successful in constraining costs by making procurement officers aware of available market prices and/or discouraging them from indulging in corrupt practices. However, without repercussions for poor performance, the impact of the experiment proved temporary, suggesting that transparency-related measures alone are not sufficient to guarantee sustained change and need to be accompanied by concrete measures (e.g. disciplinary actions, firing, social stigma, etc.) to sanction “malpractice” and poor performance. Information technology can also help improve transparency in drug price information both within and across countries. Web based drug procurement databases can ensure consistent, timely and reliable access to disclosed information in a practical format and have the potential to empower citizens who could use the information to hold private and public institutions accountable.
Information must be user-friendly, consistently reported and accessible, of reliable quality, standardized, easy to compare and disaggregated.