This is concerning for India as more than 50% of hospitals and over 80% doctors belong to the private sector
Privatisation of healthcare is associated with worse health outcomes, a review published in The Lancet has found. This is concerning for India as more than 50% of hospitals and over 80% doctors in the country belong to the private sector.
The reviewers wrote: “At an ecological level, high rates of privatisation and outsourcing almost always corresponded with worse health outcomes in the studies included in this Review. Two articles looked at regional levels of privatisation for an entire country and both found that increases in the percentage of outsourcing corresponded with higher avoidable mortality rates than before outsourcing took place. The only other article that assessed mortality rates did so in incarcerated populations, and also found increased avoidable mortality rates as the proportion of outsourced health care increased.
In India over the last few years public private partnerships have been the buzzard in healthcare with crucial national programmes such as the dialysis programme and the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana – under which eligible families get a health cover of Rs 5 lakh per annum – banking on buying in of the private sector to deliver healthcare to vulnerable populations. However The Lancet review did not look at outsourcing very favourably, pointing out that even maintenance services handed over to private entities tend to suffer from lack of quality. “Additionally, outsourced cleaning services corresponded with higher rates of inpatient infection than internal cleaning services,” it pointed out. In conclusion the authors said that their analysis debunks the myth of privatisation providing better care.
“As governments consider how to respond to the ongoing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on health-care systems, as well as the long-term responses to ageing populations and constrained budgets, they might look for a single, simple solution that promises better quality care at a cheaper cost. However, the evidence in this Review suggests that there is a risk that governments seek short-term reductions at the expense of long-term outcomes, in part because privatisation via the outsourcing of services to the private sector does not seem to deliver both better care and cheaper care,” wrote the authors from the University of Oxford.
