Regulating Private Hospitals

Why in news?

India's drug pricing authority, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), has stressed the need for better regulation of the country's massive private healthcare industry.

What is the need?

• Pricing - NPPA has made significant reduction in prices of knee implants and cardiac stents in the recent months.
• This is to cut the cost of procedures such as angioplasty and knee surgery and make it more affordable.
• However, several hospitals have hiked prices of related services which are an essential part of such surgeries like doctors' fees and hospital stay costs.
• This is done primarily to make up for the cost of price caps imposed by NPPA, defeating the very purpose of the price control measures. 
• Healthcare - India spends roughly 1% of its GDP on healthcare which is among the lowest in the world.
• This has resulted in a broken public healthcare system that few trust and nearly 70% of healthcare delivery being in the hands of private players.
• On the other hand, the efforts to make healthcare accessible and affordable are hampered by the tactics of unregulated private hospitals.

What should be done?

• The regulator thus calls for a better oversight of private hospitals as there is no legal framework at present to regulate hospital charges.
• Private hospitals should be regulated to make the billing process more transparent.
• The health ministry could also look at standardising the cost of certain treatments, so that the prices don't vary across hospitals.
• Instead of privatisation of healthcare services, which even NITI Aayog has suggested, improvements in the public health infrastructure could prove to be more inclusive.

Source: Business Standard