Context

• On 27 September, 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the rollout of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission with the aim of integrating the different and disparate digital health systems that exist into a National Digital Health Ecosystem.

What is Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM)?

• The ABDM currently has five main components:
• Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) number: A unique health identification number,
• Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR): A repository of healthcare professionals across both modern and traditional systems of medicine,
• Health Facility Registry (HFR): A repository of both public and private health facilities, including hospitals, clinics, diagnostic laboratories, and pharmacies,
• Unified Health Interface (UHI): An open protocol for digital health services linking patients with healthcare providers,
• ABHA Mobile App: An app allowing an individual to carry electronic health records.

Analyzing the future of India’s health care system

• Digitization push of Government: To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and targets of universal health coverage, the Indian government has expended significant efforts to promote the digitization of the healthcare sector to make health accessible, affordable, and equitably distributed.
• Citizens and doctors can access the health registry: The two registries would ostensibly create a database of India’s healthcare institutions and professionals that citizens would be able to access.
• Digital health card: The ABHA number and the application allow citizens to securely identify themselves and carry their health records to any healthcare facility.
• Targeted health care services: And lastly, the UHI would facilitate greater access to and delivery of healthcare services.
• Huge data for research: All of this activity has and will generate a tremendous quantity of data, which will be crucial for research, innovation, and policymaking.

Importance of private sector in health sector

• Mixed health care system: India has a mixed healthcare system, which means that it has both public and private healthcare providers. Without significant participation from the private healthcare providers, the ABDM’s ability to achieve its objectives will be limited.
• 81% doctors are private: This is because private healthcare infrastructure accounts for nearly 62 per cent of all of India’s health infrastructure and the private sector also provides 81 per cent of the doctors in India.
• Preference to private healthcare: Both rural and urban population in India seem to prefer seeking treatment from the private sector. Only 33 per cent of the rural and 26 per cent of the urban population depend on the public sector for healthcare.

Why Private health care are opting out of ABDM?

• Voluntary participation in ABDM: The voluntary nature of participation in the ABDM has led to a significant portion of private healthcare providers opting to not participate in the universal programme nor integrate into the UHI.
• High cost for digital records: Small healthcare providers like charitable hospitals, clinics, diagnostic labs, pharmacies, or nursing homes are less inclined to participate because of the significant costs involved.
• Requirement of manpower for digitization: The cost to these healthcare providers, who are most likely in various stages of digitisation, is the number of man hours required to digitise their health records and other data.
• Financial cost of digitization: The actual financial cost of upgrading or altering their digital health systems to meet basic required standards to participate in the ABDM and the UHI.

Impact of non-participation by private players

• A lack of participation from the private sector will negatively impact the objectives of the ABDM in major way:
• Limited success for UHI: Considering the concentration of private healthcare providers in urban areas, a lack of their participation and integration would limit the UHI’s ability to bring previously inaccessible services to the rural population who would otherwise have to travel to access them.
• Incomplete data and ineffective policy: The data generated by the ABDM and use of the UHI would be incomplete, which in turn would significantly limit the effectiveness of policy planning and programme delivery.

Conclusion

• It is unclear whether the government intends to achieve private sector participation through incentives or mandates. Without either approach, it seems that the ABDM will see little participation from smaller private healthcare providers, though how this will play out remains to be seen.

Mains Question

Q. What is the significance of Private Players in health care system of India? Explain the crucial role of Private health care in Ayushman Bharat digital Mission.

(Click) FREE1-to-1 on-call Mentorship by IAS-IPS officers | Discuss doubts, strategy, sources, and more

Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024

Attend Now