Regulation of Private Health Care Providers in India: Current Status, Future Directions
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019556118780093 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
64(4) 587–598
© 2018 IIPA
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0019556118780093
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ipa
Regulation of Private
Health Care Providers
in India: Current Status,
Future Directions
Indira Chakravarthi1
Abstract
In the current context of more expansive role for private sector in health
systems, especially in universal health coverage (UHC), its regulation has gained
importance in health policy discourse. This article provides an overview of the
existing regulatory mechanisms and their implementation in India, the enormity
of the regulatory challenges raised by the nature of the private health care sector
here and the available alternatives.
Keywords
Regulation of health services, private health care sector, Medical Council of India,
health care industry, social accountability
Introduction
For more than two decades now, health policy and health systems discourse have
been characterised by discussions on the inefficiencies and failures of the public
health systems and the health sector reform measures that accompanied the neolib-
eral policy measures post-1991. These reforms include reduced budgetary alloca-
tions for health, various forms of public–private partnerships and also policies
actively promoting privatisation and growth of private sector hospitals.1 The
increasing inequities in health status and access to health services, catastrophic
household expenditures on accessing medical care and the expansion and transfor-
mation of the private hospitals sector gave rise to the issues of financial protection,
the universal health coverage (UHC) discourse (ensuring financial protection to
obtain health services needed) and how to use the extensive private sector to
achieve UHC. There is increasing attention to the presence of a vast private sector
1 Independent Public Health Researcher, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
Corresponding author:
Indira Chakravarthi, Independent Public Health Researcher, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
E-mail: indira.jnu@gmail.com
To continue reading
Request your trial