Possibilities Of Reducing Healthcare Costs Using IT!

Possibilities Of Reducing Healthcare Costs Using IT!

The Centre announced the long-awaited National Health Policy 2017, which promises to increase public health spending to 2.5% of GDP in a time-bound manner and guarantees health care services to all Indian citizens, particularly the underprivileged during March 2017 (The Hindu dated 17 March 2017).

But, when we carefully review the policy, it is shifting the commitment from “Healthcare is a fundamental right” to “progressively incremental assurance-based approach to health care”. Also it is important to note there is not progress in terms of budget for the key healthcare programs. Globally, healthcare costs continue to rise through the reasons may vary from country to country such as aging populations, development of new treatments and growing population etc.

One of the fundamental reasons for increasing cost is compensation for healthcare services be it out of pocket from the patient, third party payers such as Insurance companies, TPAs, Corporates and Government programs all are focused on services and programs based not outcome based. Irrespective of the outcome, patient has a very little say on his / her health and healthcare costs.

By changing the dynamics of reimbursement / compensating the healthcare costs toward outcome achieved both the healthcare is a fundamental right and reduced cost may be achieved.

As a patient, do I know the exact cost of my treatment for a particular procedure or healthcare services?