The Indian School of Business (ISB) is organising its 11th leadership summit (ILS) from November 8 to 9, 2013 at its campus in Hyderabad.

The two-day conclave is expected to shed light on the contemporary healthcare scenario in India and deliberate on what best can be done to provide high quality affordable healthcare to the poor.

According to ISB sources, this year the ILS 2013 has taken up a theme “Breaking the Myth”, where in it is expected to focus on the changing scenario of present Indian healthcare industry and analyse how best are the public, private and corporate hospitals can play a role in realizing quality and affordable healthcare to the poor in the country.
 
“While on one hand the state and central governments are reducing their presence from an increasing number of public sectors and on the other there is a rising trend of business conglomerates venturing into new sectors including healthcare, there is a general thought prevailing amongst the thought leaders that the best way, or perhaps, the only way forward for India to achieve Universal healthcare is by large private players entering the sector and bringing in some revolutionary process optimization to provide cheap, affordable healthcare for all,” said Dr Bhanu Mahajan, a student of the Post Graduate programme at ISB.

The central government and various state governments have provided a number of incentives to the public sector and healthcare entrepreneurs to set-up operations, giving away valuable public resources at throw away prices, with the hope of moving towards achieving Universal Healthcare for all its citizens. Sadly, almost all of these “corporate hospitals” never live up to the promise of providing healthcare for the poor. Barring a few, most of these end up being like any other average hospital, not able to provide the level of care they were supposed to.

“In this race for corporatization and globalization, the ones that have successfully filled this void in healthcare delivery are the smaller, unorganised private players – small clinics, nursing homes, and small limited-specialty hospitals. These set-ups have been successful in efficiently providing quality, low-cost healthcare to a vast majority of the population,” states Dr Bhanu.

According to a recent KPMG report, smaller unorganised private sector players cater to over 60 – 70 per cent of the nation’s healthcare needs; the large private hospitals cater to not more than 10-15 per cent. The astonishing fact is that the former have developed and flourished without any significant incentives from the government.

Affordable healthcare insurance will certainly play a very important part in achieving Universal healthcare in the country, but, it is important not to ignore the fact that it might well be the smaller private players who will be able to provide services at the very low base prices set by health insurance providers. This can be substantiated by the fact that the large private hospitals have not yet been able to provide services under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) scheme and their cost structure does not, even remotely, match up to the compensation framework under RSBY.

Considering the contribution these smaller private players have traditionally made and the potential they hold in providing quality healthcare to a vast majority of population, it is imperative that the policy makers provide better incentives and encourage the expansion of this sector, empowering these smaller players to provide affordable, quality care to the masses.

In the context of a changing healthcare sector, the Indian School of Business is all set to host the ISB Leadership Summit (ILS) 2013 where eminent industry and academic leaders such as Arun Rangamani (senior vice president, Global Analytics CoE and SCIO Health Analytics), Shantanu Chattopadhya (CEO, Nationwide Doctors), Priya Anant (global CFO, Access Healthcare Org) and Dr Steven Samutt (co-chair – Wharton HC Programme) will re-examine more such myths in the medical space. In its 11th year now, ILS will focus on the theme, ‘Breaking the Myth’ on Friday-Saturday, November 8-9, 2013 at ISB’s Hyderabad campus. This two-day business conclave will feature top industry icons like Vineet Nayar (vice-chairman, HCL Technologies), Banmali Agarwala (president and CEO, GE South Asia), Kishore Biyani (chairman, Future Group), Piyush Mathur (president, Nielsen India) and CP Gurnani (MD and CEO, Tech Mahindra).