The hospitals in Andhra Pradesh will be graded to facilitate rationalisation of the fee structure and the cost of medicare and to prevent losses to hospitals offering specialised services, according to State Health Minister K. Srinivas.

He was speaking here on Sunday after inaugurating a seminar on cost management in the healthcare sector organised by the Institute of Cost Accountants of India.

He said medicare should be made accessible and affordable to all and for that purpose it would have to be rationalised and the hospitals would have to be graded and categorised. He admitted that there were many loopholes in the existing systems and they would have to corrected gradually. "The cost of medicare is rising steeply and therefore it is a challenge to offer medical services to the common man at affordable rates," he said.

S. Natarajan, an expert on the issue, said in his presentation that the cost of medicare was much cheaper compared to many other countries, but still it was pretty high by Indian standards and therefore strict costing models would have to be developed and implemented to bring down the costs. The dependence on sophisticated technology, specialised infrastructure in hospitals and the opening up of insurance sector were some of the factors leading to rise in the cost of medicare, he said.

He said the biggest challenge was to lower the costs of medicare without compromising on quality and all the stakeholders in the field would have to make a joint and concerted effort to achieve the objective, he added.

PVN Madhav, the chairman of the ICAI, Visakhapatnam chapter, also spoke.

sarma.rs@thehindu.co.in

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