National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has called for an autonomous Health Services Regulatory Authority (HSRA) similar to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to define and sanction what constitutes rational and ethical practice in healthcare. NHRC wants the authority to set quality standards for healthcare services and monitor the prices of services.
The recommendations have come at the end of India's first ever 'national public hearing on right to healthcare' jointly organised by NHRC and Jan Swasthya Abhivan (JSA), a network of about 2000 NGOs working in the health sector at the grass root level, in Delhi. The NHRC recommendations for a National Plan to operationalise the right to health care includes the enactment of a National Clinical Establishments Regulation Act that can issue a Health Services Price Control Order parallel to the Drug Price Control Order. The NHRC wants the Act to ensure citizen's health rights concerning the private medical sector including right to emergency services, ensuring minimum standards, adherence to standard treatment protocols and ceilings on prices of essential health services.
Issuing National Operational Guidelines on Essential Drugs specifying the right of all citizens to be able to access good quality essential drugs at all levels in the public health system, promotion of generic drugs in preference to brand names, inclusion of all essential drugs under Drug Price Control Order, elimination of irrational formulations and combinations are other recommendations made by the commission. Publication of a National Drug Formulary based on the morbidity pattern of Indian people and also on the essential drug list is another demand.
Enactment of a National Public Health Services Act to recognise and delineate the health rights of citizens, duties of the public health system, public health obligations of private healthcare providers and specifying broad legal and organisational mechanisms to operationalise these rights have also been recommended.
NHRC intends to oversee the monitoring of health rights at the national level by initiating and facilitating the Central Health Services Monitoring Committee, and at the regional level appointing Special Rapporteurs on Health Rights for all regions of the country. The commission has appealed to all state governments to think of supportive measures to operationalise these plans.