Report: Public health spending in India among lowest globally

Despite its growing economic prowess, India ranks among the bottom five countries with the lowest public health spending globally.

A report launched by Accenture, Delivering e-health in India — Analysis and Recommendations, pointed out that the Indian healthcare system continues to suffer from underfunding and poor governance. This has created significant inequities in providing basic healthcare.

The system has evolved in India over the past 50-60 years and the coverage and service levels remain inadequate. Moreover, the country has invested less public money in health than most comparable countries, though healthcare expenditure has increased considerably.

Substantial gaps in healthcare infrastructure, low healthcare insurance service coverage and inadequate medical manpower are the major challenges hampering the growth of the healthcare sector.

Krishna Giri, Vice-Chairman, Health and Public Services, Accenture in India, said the report identifies the importance of shifting from ‘infrastructure focus to productivity focuses’ for improvements in India’s healthcare access. This can only be achieved if larger fund allocation for healthcare is accompanied by effective and innovative interventions to improve the system to achieve global standards.

Giri, who was here in connection with a national e-governance conference, told Business Line that comprehensive adoption of IT and digitisation of systems to improve access to these services is central to improving the productivity of the overall healthcare system.  

This includes implementing hospital information systems and digitisation of records, automation of supply chain, empowering citizens through information dissemination, handheld based data collection.

Nilaya Varma, Managing Director - Management Consulting Health and Public Service Strategy and Transformation (India Lead), said Governments in India have to play a central role in creating a sustainable model for accessing quality healthcare if the country wanted to emerge as a developed nation.  

He cited the example of initiatives in other countries such as Singapore, Australia and Norway, where a substantial ground-level impact has been achieved with technology interventions.

Stressing the need for the public sector to play a major role in this, he said the Government could act as a ‘facilitator and a catalyst’ with friendly and sustainable business models order for a win-win situation for all stakeholders, including the patients.

The private expenditure on health, he said, is high at 80 per cent of the total spend and the same is not sustainable. Considering this, the need of the hour is Government intervention through people-friendly policies to set up infrastructure support to provide better healthcare access throughout the patient’s lifecycle.

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