ICAI organises ‘Asian Summit on Health Care Cost Management’

The theme for the summit was touching lives through cost management in health care

The Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICAI) recently organised a two-day ‘Asian Summit on Health Care Cost Management’ in New Delhi, with the theme ‘Touching Lives through Cost management in Health Care’. The summit was attended by eminent persons from medical, pharmaceutical, health insurance, health sector, IT, consulting and cost management fraternity. The objective of the event was collective learning aiming at providing necessary solutions to healthcare industry in bringing down the cost to provide healthcare at affordable cost.

CMA Dr AS Durga Prasad, President, Institute of Cost Accountants of India, G Srinivasan, Chairman-cum-MD, New India Assurance Co, CMA M Gopalakrishnan, Past President of the Institute & Chairman Cost & Management Committee, Rahul Khosla, MD, Max India and CMA AN Raman, Past President SAFA inaugurated the summit.

CMA Gopalakrishnan, in his welcome address, talked about the pioneering efforts made by the institute for cost management in the healthcare sector. He expressed the need for enhancing use of IT in measuring cost, sharing data about costs and integration of cost management with financial accounting.

CMA AN Raman, while introducing theme ‘Touching lives through health care cost management,’ expressed that cost management goes beyond measuring cost and aims at ensuring utilisation of scarce national resources in optimum manner. Cost management is still in evolving stage within healthcare and far away from being developed as compared to manufacturing sector.

Durga Prasad, in his welcome address, emphasised on the need for greater funding which is a major problem and interest a big burden on healthcare sector. The prevailing price disparity between large and small hospitals needs to be looked into and health insurance brought within the reach of the poor. He highlighted the need for benchmarking in healthcare and improvement in data quality. He called upon CMA fraternity to work with great zeal in association with medical profession to bring cost management in healthcare and address the issues before this sector to make healthcare deliveries at affordable cost.

On this occasion, the institute released guidance note on healthcare cost management, to provide the right templates to all users including heathcare administrators to streamline tariff fixation on generally accepted principles and implementing and effective costing system in healthcare entities. The institute also brought out ‘Knowledge Pack’ to enhance knowledge in this emerging area, with the eminent personalities contributing their valuable experiences.

Rahul Khosla shared his aspiration that healthcare should be regarded as fundamental right of every citizen and should be brought within the reach of every poor. Unfortunately, healthcare sector is facing trust deficit mainly in context of affordability and conflict of interest between various stakeholders

The summit focused on ‘Cost pressures on healthcare sector and measures to overcome them, harnessing technology to minimise healthcare cost and balancing technology, quality and cost.’