Sanjay Gwalani, Center Head, SMRC’s V M Salgaocar Hospital, Chicalim, Goa, highlights the challenges in acquiring the right talent in hospitals that arise due to the huge paucity of professionals in India
India’s healthcare sector will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16 per cent and is expected to be $280 billion in size by 2020, according to a leading news daily.
It is also expected that with the healthcare industry seeing a robust growth trajectory, workforce in the sector is expected to be at 7.4 million in 2022. The report also says that the investment opportunities in the Indian healthcare sector have increased significantly and is expected to be one of the most attractive investment targets for private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) companies. The FICC-KPMG report said that medical tourism has emerged as a strong segment due to India’s growing strength in healthcare delivery. Now the million dollar question is, “Where to find, forget the ‘Right Professionals?’ but professionals themselves. The Healthcare Outlook Report 2015 states that 57 countries across the world, including India, face a critical shortage of trained health professionals such as doctors, nurses and allied healthcare workers. “This is a global problem affecting all countries in different ways, the greatest shortages are in the poorest countries,” says the report. It proves the fact that not only inanimate resources but also the animate ones are required to be procured as part of the project. In India, the report says, the problem is compounded by poor distribution of health professionals, 80 per cent of whom work in the private sector in urban areas. Inequalities in the distribution of health workers are highest among doctors, nurses and allied healthcare workers and have a significant effect on health outcomes. This dearth of qualified professionals is one of the major challenges for the Indian healthcare industry. The matter of concern is that there is higher concentration of medical professionals in urban areas, who account for only 30 per cent of India’s total population. An alarming figure of practitioners are unqualified, yet they service the ailing population living in rural and semi-urban areas with impunity. A huge number of nursing colleges in India are unrecognised and unauthorised by state nursing councils and the Nursing Council of India. They produce hundreds of nurses every year, who have no expertise or even basic knowledge of nursing care. Such colleges have mushroomed in the country in the last decade and hampering the entire system. There is no data of or even a discussion on the hospital associated deaths due to unqualified professionals in the care delivery system. Another pertinent example is of radiology and imaging professionals across the country. The greatest need for radiology and imaging professionals is in Uttar Pradesh (around 3,600 radiology professionals). Other states witnessing these huge skill gaps are Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Assam followed by Delhi. The Indian market for medical imaging is multi-segmented and can be divided into private imaging centres, corporate and flagship hospitals, large academic centers, smaller private hospitals, corporations, government hospitals and state-run imaging centres. There is a significant requirement for radiology and imaging professionals in all these categories. Since 2013, a concrete effort has been made to organise and upgrade planned courses and further diversify standards of practice to improve the quality of medical streams. Some good initiatives such as Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) have been launched to foster the healthcare workforce but a lot of work still remains to be done. The government needs to play a crucial role in the development of this work force through the promotion of new skilling schemes and monetary incentives for youth to enroll in vocational programmes and bridge the huge shortfall of workers in the industry.
The Ministry of Health, Government of India and the same under various state governments must motivate and provide monetary aid to corporate hospital set-ups and other private, semi-private, funded and individual ownership hospitals to set up more and more vocational institutes. This can be tried initially with nursing institutes and then furthered to technical institutes in the fields of lab technology, radiology and other diagnostic technology curriculum. These initiatives must be regularly monitored by a team of experts comprising veterans in the field of academics, clinicians and administrators to peruse varied parameters which include applicability, editing the training material as per need, training effectiveness and pre and post evaluation of such trainings. More and more career counselling centres must be opened at the national level to motivate and guide students to opt for healthcare specially the allied healthcare services as a promising career option. Today, the well-off crowd of students can afford to avail coaching to prepare for medical entrance examination but the same is not true for the not so fortunate ones. Therefore students are forced to opt for allied health services from sub-standard and unrecognised institutes and eventually to turn out into unqualified professionals. After they pass out, either they struggle for jobs or somehow enter into sub-standard hospitals and nursing homes thereby producing or adding errors in clinical outcomes. This in turn ultimately leaves no choice for ailing patients for the correct treatment which is their basic right. As on date, there is no data with the competent authorities on the number of medical errors arising due to involvement of unqualified and untrained medical staff in hospitals.
No doubt the Indian healthcare industry is growing at a faster pace than the last decade, however, it is also important to understand that the workforce requirement is mammoth. Also, no hospital set-up usually entertains freshers and requires experienced staff with at least a couple of years of hands-on experience. This makes the job of a hospital human resource manager all the more challenging. This situation though tends to be more favourable for candidates considering the demand and supply gap, but not suitable in the larger interest of the industry because ultimately it is the patient who has to pay the price, be it visible or invisible.
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