Guest Lecture: Shobha Mishra Ghosh (Senior Director of FICCI.)

Last week on the 23 September 2013 we had a guest lecture by Ms. Shobha Mishra Ghosh, Senior Director of FICCI.

Besides highlighting the activities of FICCI through its presence in 70 different countriesMs. Ghosh talked at length about current healthcare scenario in India. She cited that in 2004-05 fiscal year healthcare expenditure in India was about 22 billion USD same had moved to a remarkable figure of 60 billion USD in year 2011-12. At present, India spends about 4 % of its GDP on health care. She also mentioned that public spending in Indian healthcare sector is on the rise, it has moved to 2.5 % of GDP from earlier number of 1.5% in last 5 years.    

                Ms.Ghosh articulated three tenets of healthcare for all namely Accessibility, Affordability, and Quality. She mentioned that these elements can be successfully achieved through Standardization, Innovation, self-regulation and public accountability. 

                While speaking about state of healthcare affordability in India Ms.Ghosh mentioned that health insurance coverage in India is on the lower side with just 24% of the population under some sort of healthcare insurance coverage.  While speaking about Quality, she identified ‘quality of healthcare data’ as a major challenge in India. She mentioned that though India has one of the more affordable healthcare systems compared to many other countries still it has over 30% of its population under poverty line mainly because of rising healthcare costs.

She went on to talk about each of these points in detail starting with current situation of healthcare system in India. She mentioned at present the government is focusing on rural healthcare development. Out of 1.45 million hospital beds 45% are in private sector at the same time 65% of patients opt for private providers. She referred to a recent World Health Organization study which concluded that India loses almost 5% of its GDP to handle public healthcare burden. In 1970s Indian government strived for “Roti, Kapada, makan” for all; now it has a new focus of providing “Sehat(Health),Sadak(Infrastructure),Shiksha(education)” for all.

She talked about various ongoing efforts by Indian government though its organizations like NABH, NABI etc to improve the Quality and affordability of healthcare in India. For example NABH has already accredited 188 hospitals till 2013 and 470 more have applied for the accreditation process. Patient safety is main goal for these government organizations.

Next, she talked about FICCI health services and its working pattern of moving from identifying a key issue to publishing a white paper which covers all aspects of the particular issue. She also spoke at length about various standardization initiatives like standard healthcare guidelines. She indicated that till date FICCI has passed over 250 standard healthcare guidelines. 

Towards the end of the talk Ms.Ghosh briefed about various ongoing activities at FICCI like promoting quality in diagnostics, NCD management and prevention, healthcare costing, healthcare quality promotion through health insurance etc.  Some Questions raised by our class post her session:

Questions Session

 1. Opinion and governments outlook on the standardization and implementation of the Clinical Establishment Act 2010 act through the country. Will the act get implemented throughout the country in near future?

2.Opinion on governments take on reducing cost to the patient by reimbursing cost of treating emergency cases to hospital.

3. Point of view and governments take on the on certain provisions such as provisional certificate issue ,cancellation of registration of large hospitals.

4. Do health care managers fit in the FICCI? If yes,where? Can FICCI collaborate with SIHS to train students on the ideas expected in FICCI?

5. Shouldn’t government hospitals be accredited ?.

6. How to bring out standardization in healthcare throughout the country especially between urban and rural?

7. How to implement the policies related to health care and what is the role of the government in it?

8. How can you provide better quality health care at a low cost?

9. Can FICCI collaborate with symbiosis in providing training to students for research? 

10. How can we implement a healthcare model which is suited to the need of India? 

As reported by Dr Yogita Patil  & Dr. Saad Saiyed