HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT
Priming Primary Healthcare Post-Pandemic While we can proudly say that we fared better than most developed nations with regards to the pandemic in the first wave, in the current surge, it has exposed our weak healthcare system, of course, along with it our grit and resourcefulness as well to get things done! Nevertheless, it is time to spruce up our health systems, and very specifically we need to start with the primary care. And we need to start at the grassroots in the rural areas. For, this is where will lie our prosperity—health wise as well as cost wise. Our primary systems need to be enabled to nip the evil in the bud. Gurrit K Sethi, Strategic Advisor, Global Health Services, Global Strategic Analysis
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ndia has one of the largest primary healthcare set-ups in the world, from an infrastructure perspective. With our three-tiered primary health system, each sub-centre covers a population of three-to-five thousand people, each Primary Health Centre (PHC) covers a population of twenty-to-thirty thousand, and a Community Centre around eighty thousand to a lac. This three-tiered system covers every nook and corner of the country. Fact is, however, that despite this large spread across the length and breadth of the country, the health coverage remains scarce, especially in the rural areas. Eighty percent of health coverage is still provided by private players. However, this is also unevenly distributed with a concentration in large cities. The moot question is that when we do have the basic infrastructure available for good primary healthcare services funded
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A SI A N H O S P I T A L & H EA LT HCAR E M A N AGE M E N T
by the government, why is there still a lag in such a life critical service? The answer lies in the low doctor-patient and the nurse-patient ratios in our country. And this could be attributed to a considerable brain drain as well as owing to lack of opportunities. While the capacity for
IS S UE - 52, 2021
education in these streams has been increasing over the last few years, owing to the lack of quality of faculty and other resources, this is impacting the speed and quality of student output. The private sector has lately seen the advent of the primary healthcare services or retail healthcare over the last few years. However, there are few success stories in primary care, or, rather the story in this sector is still evolving. The cost of the offering is high, profits low and thus few takers from the investment standpoint for the traditional brick and mortar models. And with the evolving needs for home healthcare and other specialised models, primary healthcare is taking a backseat. The key concerns for availability of primary healthcare services, with this background, remain – accessibility, quality and cost. All three challenges
