Measuring the quality of healthcare in India can be challenging due to the complex and diverse healthcare system in the country. However, here are some ways to measure the quality of healthcare in India:
Accreditation: Healthcare providers can be accredited by various organizations such as the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH). Accreditation ensures that healthcare providers meet a certain set of standards, including patient safety and quality of care.
Patient Feedback: Collecting patient feedback through surveys, questionnaires, or online reviews can help measure the quality of healthcare. This can provide insight into patient satisfaction, patient outcomes, and patient experience.
Clinical Outcomes: Measuring clinical outcomes, such as mortality rates, infection rates, readmission rates, and complications can help measure the quality of healthcare.
Process Measures: Process measures such as wait times, hospital-acquired infection rates, and adherence to clinical guidelines can provide an indication of the quality of care.
Comparative Analysis: Comparing healthcare providers, hospitals, or clinics based on quality metrics can help identify areas for improvement and drive competition in the healthcare industry.
Health Information Technology (HIT): HIT can be used to track healthcare quality metrics such as electronic health record (EHR) adoption rates, telemedicine usage, and patient engagement.
In summary, measuring the quality of healthcare in India can be done through accreditation, patient feedback, clinical outcomes, process measures, comparative analysis, and health information technology. These metrics can help healthcare providers and policymakers identify areas for improvement and ensure that patients receive high-quality healthcare services.
What is the position of India in healthcare? Among 195 nations, India ranks overall at 66 with a score of 42.8 and a decline of 0.8 points since 2019 in the GHS index.
Almost 122 Indians per 100,000 die due to poor quality of care each year, the study said, showing up India’s death rate due to poor care quality worse than that of Brazil (74), Russia (91), China (46) and South Africa (93) and even its neighbours Pakistan (119), Nepal (93), Bangladesh (57) and Sri Lanka (51).
A study published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2018 compared South Asian countries on access to health services and health care quality. It ranked India the lowest, despite the fact countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have much lower GDPs.
India’s health care sector provides a wide range of quality of care, from globally acclaimed hospitals to facilities that deliver care of unacceptably low quality. Efforts to improve the quality of care are particularly challenged by the lack of reliable data on quality and by technical difficulties in measuring quality.