What is the issue?
- A seven-year-old girl lost her life in a private hospital in Gurugram due to dengue-related complications and the girl’s family was highly charged for the medical expenses.
- This has highlighted the government’s inability to provide quality health care and increasing space occupied by the private sectors.
What is the share of private sector in public health system?
- The private sector moved in swiftly, becoming the health set-up of choice for all except the poorest.
- From 8 per cent in 1947, the private sector now accounts for 93 per cent of all hospitals.
- The recent controversy has underscored the need for regulating billing in private hospitals.
What are the concerns with government policies?
- Health is a state subject. Thus policy implementation by the state government had a low uptake in improving the public health system.
- The Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010 was intended by the centre as legislation for the regulation of hospitals by state governments.
- Standard treatment guidelines were drawn up for specific conditions and diseases, to obviate overprescription of drugs or additional costs of diagnostics.
- There is neither monitoring nor an enforcement mechanism for the guidelines.
- Recently two state governments have formulated laws related to regulating clinical establishments.
- The West Bengal Clinical Establishments (Registration, Regulation and Transparency) Act and the Karnataka Private Medical Establishments (Amendment) Bill, 2017.
- The two acts have penal provisions against doctors who overcharge.
- Health insurance has penetrated only 3-4 per cent of the country’s population.
What measures needs to be taken?
- The State should consider improve public health through raising the level of nutrition.
- The National Health Policy 2017 provides a roadmap for public-private partnerships in healthcare.
- The policy recognised that the primary care will forever be in the domain of the government.
- It talks of strategic purchasing of secondary and tertiary care from the private sector.
- For that to happen, the government should devise an effective regulatory mechanism to drill transparency into the private healthcare system.
Source: Indian Express