Relevance : GS Paper II
Health insurance schemes provide insurance largely for private hospitalisation and not basic medical care.
Ignoring the primary care
- Bhore Committee report (1946) highlighted the need for a ‘social physician’ as a key player.
- Medical Council of India has been dominated by specialists with no representation from primary care.
- There has been opposition to training mid-level health care providers under the NMC Act 2019.
- Proposals to train practitioners of indigenous systems of medicine are also met with opposition.
- Such medical assistants have been written-off as ‘half-baked quacks’.
Comparison with developed nations
- Nations like the U.K., U.S. are consistently training paramedics and nurses to become physician assistants.
- Japan accorded a prominent voice to its primary care practitioners (PCP) in its decision-making processes.
- In India, on the contrary, a hospital-oriented, technocentric model of health care took early roots with alogside flourshing of private sector.
Way forward
- One, it is imperative to actively begin reclaiming health from the ‘hospitals’.
- Two, we need to adequately empower and ennoble PCPs and give them a prominent voice in our decision-making processes.
- Three, a gate-keeping system is needed, and no one should be allowed to bypass the primary doctor to directly reach the specialist.