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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Expert group moots a new national health regulatory authority by Aarti Dhar

Expert group moots a new national health regulatory authority by Aarti Dhar

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published Published on Sep 26, 2011   modified Modified on Sep 26, 2011

A report by an expert group on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has suggested wide-ranging institutional reforms to regulate the public and the private sectors to ensure assured quality and rational pricing of healthcare services.

The group, set up by the Planning Commission to develop a blue print and investment plan to meet the human resource requirements to achieve health for all by 2020, focuses on rational use of drugs. The extensive practice of prescribing hazardous, non-essential and irrational medicines should be eliminated. In addition to legislative and other regulatory measures, intensive efforts should be made to educate and encourage doctors and citizens to use generic drugs, it says.

Calling for a structured regulatory framework to monitor and enforce essential healthcare regulations to control entry, quality, quantity and prices of drugs, the report suggests the establishment of a National Health Regulatory and Development Authority that would regulate and monitor public and private healthcare providers, with powers of enforcement and redressal.

This regulator should oversee contracts, accredit healthcare providers, develop ethical standards for care delivery, enforce patient's charter of rights and take measures to control entry and quality and prices of drugs. It will also regulate pharmaceutical and medical devices and provide patients' access to safe and cost effective products.

Pitching for the creation of a Indian Public Health Service cadre, , the group feels that there is an immediate need to establish public health training institutions. It also endorses the establishment of health science universities, which will give degrees in various courses and ensure uniformity in admissions, curricula, training and accreditation for all degrees in medical, nursing, pharmacy, public health and allied health professional fields.

Concerned about “over-medicalisation,” the group says this must be considered along with need to correct the severe imbalance in distribution of medical colleges in the country. “We do not view the medical colleges merely as production units for doctors. Instead, we see each medical college as an integral part of the health system, responsive to and partly responsible for the health needs of one or two districts. We believe that this purpose can be served by functionally linking medical colleges to the district hospitals and mandating a substantial proportion of local student enrolment,” notes the report.

Another proposed body, the National Health and Medical Facilities Accreditation Authority will define standards for healthcare facilities and help them adopt and use management technologies. It will ensure meaningful use of allocated resources and special focus will be given to information technology resources and oversee the operations and administrative protocols of healthcare facilities.

The health system evaluation unit will be an autonomous body that will independently evaluate the performance of both the public and private health services at all levels — after establishing systems to get real time data for performance monitoring of inputs, outputs and outcomes while the National Health promotion and Protection Trusts shall play a catalytic role in facilitating the promotion of better health culture among people, health providers and policy makers. It will promote public awareness about key health issue, track progress and impact on the social determinants of health, and provide technical expert advice to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Endorsing the setting up of the proposed National Council for Human Resources in Health to prescribe, monitor and promote standards of health professional education, the group has backed the introduction of a three-year Bachelor of Rural Health care (BRHC) degree that will produce a cadre of rural healthcare practitioners for recruitment and placement at the sub-centre that will help in overcoming the shortage of healthcare workers.


The Hindu, 27 September, 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2488993.ece


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