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MuhammadRaees
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A healthy India is a wealthy India. For an emerging economic superpower, health of its people is critical for economic productivity. Ayushman Bharat, which recently completed a year of existence, was conceptualised as an insurance based, healthcare delivery model that dovetails both preventive and curative healthcare at a coverage of Rs 5,00,000 per family per year.
Whilst preventive care is to be delivered through health and wellness centres that provide comprehensive primary care, curative intervention is sought to be addressed by leveraging existing public and private hospital infrastructure and human resources in the country. Universal health coverage was launched via a fee for service model where government and empanelled private sector hospitals provide an opportunity to leverage a potential universe of general and ICU beds.
The government has also strategically linked primary and tertiary care via the National Health Authority to ensure better coordination across the continuum of care. The way forward is to build a digital healthcare architecture that leverages the power of technology to create Electronic Medical Records, Disease Registries, track real-time data capture and analyse health data to generate economic models for preventive and managed care.
It is also imperative that we transition from transactional records of patient episodes into longitudinal records aimed at driving operational efficiency. We must also direct health economic data to link value as opposed to cost with quality of care that will reward private sector providers that in turn will build a sustainable public-private relationship, which is so critical for tertiary care management within Ayushman Bharat.
Further, as we evolve our system, we must not forget the learnings from previous experiences of data collection by frontline ASHA workers, which met with several challenges. We must adopt innovative new technologies such as the use of voice-enabled records to build both ease and reliability of data capture which is emerging as a global best practice.
With India's economic development, the burden of disease has shifted significantly from acute to chronic care. This shift has brought with it catastrophic health expenditures. There is evidence of large multigenerational debt accumulation for accessing medical care which was skewed towards the male gender. Ayushman Bharat is posed with a number of challenges that range from non-communicable diseases to women’s health and infant mortality.
The burden of chronic ailments such as diabetes, cancer, cardiac and respiratory disease is enormous.