I feel, over the next five years the healthcare industry should increase to at least five per cent of the GDP.
Major revamping of the healthcare infrastructure is needed which includes upgrading the primary healthcare systems (PHC). This should also include preventive health measures, prenatal care, vaccinations and counselling on the importance of hygienic practices, sanitation, clean drinking water etc
Government should focus actively on promoting PHC at all rural centres and secondary care hospitals at taluka levels and tertiary care establishments in districts hospitals
Supporting the primary and secondary care could be predominantly government’s responsibility while the tertiary could be a PPP initiative
Another aspect that should be given its due consideration is lack of nursing, para-medical personnel and doctors, both at MBBS and PG level. We need to have a massive exercise in increasing skilled healthcare workers at all levels to meet the ever growing demand. There is a vast gap between demand and supply of medical personnel, which stresses on the need for an urgent liberalisation of medical education policy to allow more doctors especially at postgraduate levels to be trained at corporate/private hospitals.
Opening up a medical college at every district and using the district hospital facilities would also benefit if sourced from a PPP. This would increase the supply and reduce the demand, eventually leading to reduced corruption and selling of seats at huge profits.
Affordability of quality healthcare is also another factor that plagues India. To make treatments more affordable we need to reduce duty on all life saving and critical medical devices along with encouraging and incentivising local production of these. The government should be more engaged in providing insurance for healthcare rather than be a provider of healthcare. The concept of universal healthcare is encouraging but the cost of care has to be reasonable so that private players will come forward to participate in this.
It is an absolute must in our country where private healthcare accounts for a large majority of healthcare to have a public private participation.
Unfortunately our country is categorised into two sections -the affordable Indian who can get the best of healthcare and the unaffordable Indian who is relegated to the 19th century healthcare, usually in semi-urban and rural India.
The greatest challenge for all of us is to bridge these two Indians while we focus on our way forward.
– Dr Sudarshan Ballal, Medical Director & Chairman, Medical Advisory Board, Manipal Health Enterprises
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