The government of India has identified the absence of standard management protocols for treatment as an important problem plaguing the physicians of the country. It has also noted that the doctors often find it difficult to make the patients understand and appreciate the rational use of diagnostics and drugs. Loss of the patient-doctor rapport, leading to increasing litigations was also highlighted as one of the important issues faced by the physicians of India.

Dr Prema Ramachandran, advisor, Planning Commission said that the doctors, patients as well as institutions are all facing lot of problems due to the fast nature of changes sweeping the Indian healthcare sector. She said that treatment has become expensive with the introduction of high tech procedures and the necessity for quality modern institutional setup. "Multi professional health system with screening and referral is needed to provide good quality health care at affordable cost" she said.

Addressing a CII-Indian Healthcare Federation organized seminar here recently, Dr Prema said the difficulties faced by Indian hospitals keeping in mind imperatives of changing healthcare needs, technological obsolescence of equipment, rapid turnover of skilled professionals etc are very serious. "Conflicting need for improving quality of care, containment of cost, social responsibilities in health, labour laws, consumer litigation etc are problems faced by the institutions", she said.

Considering all the practical problems, the government has during the Tenth Plan decided to offer need based healthcare. It is to provide subsidized devise targeting mechanism of payment for health care by other segments of population. Dr Prema said that the government would also evolve and implement appropriate scheme for health financing to meet hospitalization and treatment costs of chronic ailments in APL families. The range of health finance options may include health insurance for individuals, institutions, industries and social insurance for BPL families.

She felt that equitable, efficient and high quality health services will lead to equitable accessible good quality care, efficient private sector, and result in preventive care health education for life style modification.