Sustainable health financing system

Dr Jitendra Sharma, Director and CEO, Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone spoke on sustainable health financing systems and elaborated on how it touches various segments of the healthcare sector. He began the session by categorising  how India’s health financing system works in terms of providing health services,  medicine, diagnostic services, health promotion and education as well as industrial promotion and medical equipment.

Dr Sharma cited an example of how the Andhra Pradesh Government has come up with a smart health financing system wherein the state having a simple budgeting strategy has managed to keep their net inflow higher than their net expenditure. He further provided details of the scheme saying, “In January this year, N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister, AP, launched the Arogya Raksha scheme that encompasses all health financing schemes. The idea behind this is to offer medical insurance to those who were not covered under any of the existing health schemes of the state government. To avail the benefits of Arogya Raksha, all one needs to do is pay Rs 100 per month per head. The health insurance cover is offered up to Rs 2 lakh and free treatment can be had for 1,044 listed health ailments in any of the 432 corporate hospitals and 80 government hospitals in the state.”

He also gave a rundown on the myriad financing programmes being implemented in different states and their impact. At the same time, he also cautioned the need for more streamlined processes such as third party audits of these programmes for better transparency and efficiency.

He also spoke on the need for an effective tender management system and how this will impact the good governance in healthcare. Additionally, he highlighted the AP government’s initiative in make Aadhar card, a single point identification number, to avail services under the public health schemes from the state.

Dr Sharma further recalled the purpose of National Diagnostic scheme launched by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and spoke on its importance, urging the audience to leverage this scheme to provide quality diagnostic services to the public. He mentioned about the fair price shop for medicines under the Jan Aushadhi scheme. He spoke of the Swasthya Vidya Vahini Scheme, a health education launched by the AP government and said that initiative like these should be leveraged to promote their right health information to the public at large. Lastly, he spoke on the importance promoting the medtech industry in order to drive innovation in healthcare.

Key recommendations:

• Need for an effective tender management system
• Promote the medtech industry in order to drive innovation in healthcare