The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) national committee has chalked out a national accreditation roadmap along with the Indian Hospitals Federation to help certify and rate the hospital service quality standard. The initiative will involve 25-30 corporate hospitals besides medical colleges and would eventually involve government healthcare providers to help tackle issues on quality, technology, infrastructure and cost.

The initiative has come out after several rounds of deliberations and plans to create a regulatory authority in healthcare care delivery systems. This was stated by Vishal Bali, chairman, National Service Sector Conclave (Healthcare) and vice president, operations Wockhardt Hospital and Heart Institute during CII announcement of its second annual two-day National Service Sector Conclave scheduled on September 12 and 13, in Bangalore.

The National Service Sector Conclave is organised to bring India to a competitive level excellence. The four service sectors to be featured are healthcare, entertainment, hospitality and business process outsourcing (BPOs) and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES). The service sector contributes 50 percent to the GDP growth in India. We plan to bring the service levels to international levels, upgrade the sectors in their service levels. Experts in the fields will deliberate and raise new issues in the market and pick up the trends a manner that we need to move for value-added options, said KN Shenoy, chairman, National Service Sector Conclave and CII Institute of Quality.

Healthcare is repeated for the second consecutive year mainly because of its new thrust. The services are at the crossroads. "We have at one end the need to serve the rural masses and at the other showcase our capabilities globally in terms of medical skills and infrastructure, said Bali.

According to a CII study, the central and state governments incur only 20 per cent of the healthcare expenditure as against 30-40 per cent in other countries. The government healthcare spending is used to provide government facilities and there is a lack of competition between different providers, which limits the ability to expand. The private providers account for 75 per cent of the healthcare delivery systems. Almost 33 percent of the medical practitioners in the country are unqualified. There is a lack of regulations on quality medical infrastructure. Against this back drop there is a an urgent need for the private and the government sector to work and network together on how to jointly improve India's healthcare sector.

There are four technical sessions that will cover in detail every aspect of the current areas. The session on health insurance will highlight the impact of health insurance and the effectiveness of the health cooperative movement are reaching the rural masses.

There is also a session to highlight the role models among the healthcare providers like the Arvind Eye Hospital, Chennai Apollo Group, Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences etc, which are now international destinations for healthcare services.

There is a panel discussion on 'cost-versus-reach' in healthcare to ascertain the cost-effectiveness of treatment. The panel will also delve in to new paradigm for Indian hospitals to adopt 'hi-tech with hi-touch'. We want India to be a quality healthcare destination which is probably cost-effective, stated Bali.