Objective To describe the range of Public-private partnerships (PPP) in the provision of healthcare services, and how the authors have assessed these partnerships. Methods We searched 19 international electronic databases and 3 grey literature databases up to September 2008. Nine websites of relevant organizations and Google were searched for any missing information. Search terms were determined by both health policy experts and search specialists after repeated discussion and pilot searching. Our inclusion criteria were research papers that reported describing or evaluating any public-private partnerships in provision of healthcare services. Two reviewers independently screened, appraised and extracted the data, and disagreements were resolved by discussion or by consulting a third researcher. The studies that scored A or B in terms of quality assessment were analyzed. Results Of the 38 studies included in the analysis, 22 studies aimed to describe strategies, while 16 ones were to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies. The targeted populations were tuberculosis patients, AIDS patients, psychiatric patients, community residents and children. Six partnership mechanisms were categorized: ① formal/ informal contract; ② working group committee; ③ supervision, training and regulation; ④ support and subsidizing; ⑤ integration of health care organizations; and ⑥ co-location. Most of the studies evaluating effectiveness were observational studies. Only three studies were comparative studies, pre- and post- intervention. The results of the most evaluation studies showed that PPP had positive impact on service provision, while it also had some problems and challenges. Conclusion Current studies show that PPP could improve health service provisions to some extent. There are limitations in the range of health services and the depth of the studies, especially evaluation studies that lack rigorous design. However, people should be cautious when they try to learn from the experience from internationally successful PPPs and consider the Chinese context, as the effect of PPP is closely associated with the relevant implementation context.