How rural India gains from Niti Aayog’s healthcare policy

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Shishir Asthana
Moneycontrol Research

In a bid to bring in much-needed funds to the healthcare sector, Niti Aayog and the Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare will have to increase the role of private hospitals in treating non-communicable diseases in urban India. A news report says that the agreement, which is being shared with other states for their view, allows private hospitals to bid for 30-year leases over parts of district hospital buildings and land to set up 50- or 100-bed hospitals in towns other than India’s eight largest metropolises.

Apart from giving land the hospitals will also have to share their back-end services such as blood banks and ambulance services with the private players. As if this was not enough the state government will also provide the viability gap funding to the private players.

Furthermore, the district health administration will have to ensure referrals for treatment from primary health centres, community health centres, disease screening centres and other government health programmes.

In order to make the project a success only those district hospitals that have at least a two-year record of treating more than 1,000 cases in the outpatient department every day should be considered for privatization.

The proposal prima facie looks tilted towards private players as they are being given land and money to set up operations. Without too much investment, these players are also being assured of patients which will be referred from other government health centres.

However, the point to be noted is that the government is looking at making medical facilities available at areas which have none. Even the present proposal is for private hospitals who will provide secondary and tertiary medical treatment for cancer, heart diseases and respiratory tract ailments at prices that are not higher than those prescribed under government health insurance schemes.

Most of the government hospitals in smaller cities in India offer basic healthcare services. Without spending much money, the government is using its resources well to bring healthcare facility closer to the rural poor.

City hospitals are packed with out-station patients, who not only find the health facility in the city costly, but even the cost of staying in the city during the treatment period adds to the cost.

The basic infrastructure of the hospital like ambulance services, blood blank, physiotherapy services, bio-medical waste disposal system, mortuary services, parking facilities, electricity load, in-patient payment counters and hospital security will be shared with the private hospital. The cost of setting up the private hospital will thus be low. With state government meeting the viability gap funding, the cost for setting up the facility will not be high.

Critics say that the shortfall of the project is that those who are not beneficiaries of the government insurance schemes will have to pay the full cost of treatment and there will be no beds reserved for free services.

The government has launched extremely affordable insurance policies and has promoted it extensively through various media, especially to the poor sections of the society, both in urban and rural India. As for reservation of beds, it would be a blessing for rural India to have a hospital which offers treatment of cancer, heart and respiratory tract diseases near their doorsteps, rather than spending a bounty in travelling to the nearest city.

However, organised players in the country will not be too enthused with the proposal as it does not give them the freedom to charge hefty fees from the patients. But the smaller and unorganised players can be assured of good volume of patients and a decent earning.

The biggest beneficiary will be the rural patient, who can access affordable treatment closer to their home.