Despite its growing economic prowess, India ranks among the bottom five countries with the lowest public health spending globally and accounts for 21 per cent of the world’s burden of disease, according to a report done by Accenture.
While the system has evolved in India over the past 50-60 years, the coverage and service levels of the entire public health ecosystem remains inadequate. Indian healthcare system continues to suffer from underfunding and poor governance which have created significant inequities in providing basic health care, says the report titled “‘Delivering e-Health in India – Analysis and Recommendations.’
While India’s healthcare expenditure has increased in the past and the government plans to increase the same further to nearly 2.5 per cent of the GDP in the 12th five year plan, India has invested less public money in health than most comparable countries. India’s overall health spending does reach 6 per cent of the GDP but most of that is private money, it said.
Hospital bed density in India has stagnated at 0.9 per 1000 population since 2005 and falls significantly short of WHO laid guidelines of 3.511 per 1000 patients' population. Moreover, there is a huge inequity in utilization of facilities at the village, district and state levels with state level facilities remaining the most strained. Low healthcare insurance service coverage leads to high levels of out of pocket spending: Nearly 80 per cent of spend in India is out-of pocket, primarily due to with extremely limited insurance coverage, both personal and government funded. Research has shown that the proportion of medical and healthcare expenditure in overall personal consumption has risen considerably over the years, as per the report.
Source:Pharmabiz
India is currently known to have approximately 600,000 doctors and 1.6 mn nurses. This translates into one doctor for every 1,800 people. The recommended WHO guidelines suggest that there should be 1 doctor for every 600 people. This translates into a resource gap of approximately 1.4 mn doctors and 2.8 mn nurses. There is also a clear disparity in the man power present in the rural and urban areas, it says.
“Our report identifies the importance of shifting from ‘infrastructure focus’ to ‘productivity focus’ to generate corresponding improvements in India’s healthcare access. This can only be achieved if larger fund allocation for healthcare is accompanied by effective and innovative interventions to improve the existing healthcare ecosystem in order to achieve global standards,” said Krishna Giri, managing director, Health & Public Services, Accenture in India.
The report has suggested implementing hospital information systems and records digitization as one of the key measures to be adopted. Supply chain management system for drugs, vaccines and other consumables, along with equipment and other hard assets, is the cornerstone of all successful healthcare systems. The most critical components of the same are cold chain and logistics systems.
Empowering citizens through information dissemination, handheld based data collection and analytics-enabled real time disease surveillance are the other measures recommended by the report.
While the system has evolved in India over the past 50-60 years, the coverage and service levels of the entire public health ecosystem remains inadequate. Indian healthcare system continues to suffer from underfunding and poor governance which have created significant inequities in providing basic health care, says the report titled “‘Delivering e-Health in India – Analysis and Recommendations.’
While India’s healthcare expenditure has increased in the past and the government plans to increase the same further to nearly 2.5 per cent of the GDP in the 12th five year plan, India has invested less public money in health than most comparable countries. India’s overall health spending does reach 6 per cent of the GDP but most of that is private money, it said.
Hospital bed density in India has stagnated at 0.9 per 1000 population since 2005 and falls significantly short of WHO laid guidelines of 3.511 per 1000 patients' population. Moreover, there is a huge inequity in utilization of facilities at the village, district and state levels with state level facilities remaining the most strained. Low healthcare insurance service coverage leads to high levels of out of pocket spending: Nearly 80 per cent of spend in India is out-of pocket, primarily due to with extremely limited insurance coverage, both personal and government funded. Research has shown that the proportion of medical and healthcare expenditure in overall personal consumption has risen considerably over the years, as per the report.
Source:Pharmabiz
India is currently known to have approximately 600,000 doctors and 1.6 mn nurses. This translates into one doctor for every 1,800 people. The recommended WHO guidelines suggest that there should be 1 doctor for every 600 people. This translates into a resource gap of approximately 1.4 mn doctors and 2.8 mn nurses. There is also a clear disparity in the man power present in the rural and urban areas, it says.
“Our report identifies the importance of shifting from ‘infrastructure focus’ to ‘productivity focus’ to generate corresponding improvements in India’s healthcare access. This can only be achieved if larger fund allocation for healthcare is accompanied by effective and innovative interventions to improve the existing healthcare ecosystem in order to achieve global standards,” said Krishna Giri, managing director, Health & Public Services, Accenture in India.
The report has suggested implementing hospital information systems and records digitization as one of the key measures to be adopted. Supply chain management system for drugs, vaccines and other consumables, along with equipment and other hard assets, is the cornerstone of all successful healthcare systems. The most critical components of the same are cold chain and logistics systems.
Empowering citizens through information dissemination, handheld based data collection and analytics-enabled real time disease surveillance are the other measures recommended by the report.
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