Sachin Jagdale – Hyderabad
A national health conference, hosted by PGDHM students, Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad, on September 14 concluded with the key stake holders from the healthcare industry requesting Indian Government to play a more proactive role for increasing healthcare access in India. Though India has some successful healthcare schemes to its credit, the low levels of healthcare spending in the country has indeed kept many needy people deprived of necessary healthcare facilities.
More than a billion population of India is subjected to varied kinds of environmental conditions. hence, their disease patterns, healthcare requirements and the challenges in making healthcare accessible to them also vary considerably. Inaccessibility to skilled doctors is another concern all over India, especially in rural areas. “There is a mismatch between doctors that are graduating and seats available to them for post graduation,” says Sudhakar Jadhav, Facility Director, Narayana Hrudalaya Hospital, Hyderabad. He adds, “Health workforce remains inadequate and under utilised. The total number of allopathic doctors and nurses in the country lags behind the WHO benchmark of 2.5 doctors per 1000 population. Despite the scarcity of medical personnel, the problem of under utilisation exists.”
As the traditional methods have proved inadequate in ensuring healthcare access to people, according to Venugopal Reddy Kandimalla, Delivery Head Healthcare, Tata Consultancy Services, digitisation of healthcare services could help resolve the issue. He says, “Some of the important issues that the Indian healthcare system is plagued with today are access, quality and affordability. A quick assessment of the system would indicate that digitisation is at a very early adoption stage. Baring tertiary care hospitals in private sector and few hospitals as well as some special schemes in public sector, much of the healthcare in India is still not touched by information and communication technology. Given this, there is tremendous potential for e-Health systems to play a vital role in making healthcare accessible, affordable and improve the overall outcomes.”
Venugopal adds, “It is important to give a regulatory push to create national level infrastructure for primary health and disease management. With a billion plus population, we need this infrastructure to manage national disasters and communicable diseases. With life style changes, urbanisation and modernisation of food production, the diseases are on the rise and a strong infrastructure is essential to face it. E-health systems will be a big enabler for any initiative taken up to face this situation.”
Dr Ramana Rao‘s talk on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model highlighted many ways of strengthening the healthcare access system in India. According to him, PPP in health has benefits like potential value for money, early service delivery and gains from technology innovation. He feels that it also obviates the need to borrow for financing infrastructure investment and access to improved services.
Service without quality will hardly find any takers in the healthcare industry. Dr Abhimanyu Bishnu, GM, Medical Services and Quality, Global Health City, Chennai, shares the same opinion. He says, “In an age of technological sophistication, increasing complexity of delivery and heightened awareness among healthcare consumers, not to mention a litigious atmosphere, quality has become a vital part of healthcare delivery. Therefore, the development of systems for quality and patient safety is in the national interest of the country, and must be promoted at all levels.”
Talking about the success of the event, Chandrasekhar, Dean, ASCI said, “I look forward to seeing such academic events and networking occasions increase in scale and scope. I am confident that the programme is poised to witness a significant enhancement in its role and performance, on the strength of the enthusiasm and commitment of the Team-PGDHM.”
To change or to improve healthcare system in India, debates like these are extremely important. This national health conference by ASCI holds even more significance because these students are going to become active contributing members of the Indian healthcare system in future. This may be a small beginning but industry players and government can take a leaf out of such debates and try to restructure healthcare operations in the country.
