NITI Aayog Launches Report on Best Practices in the Performance of District Hospitals
- Recently, NITI Aayog has released a performance assessment report of district hospitals in India, titled ‘Best Practices in the Performance of District Hospitals’.
About the Report:
Collaboration: The report is an outcome of collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and WHO India.
Data Validation: The National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers, a constituent board of the Quality Council of India, conducted the on-ground data validation.
- The Health Management Information System (HMIS) data for the year 2017–18 has been used as the baseline for this exercise.
Categorisation: For this performance assessment, district hospitals were categorized into small (up to 200 beds), mid-sized (201-300 beds) and large hospitals (more than 300 beds).
- Of the total hospitals, 62% were small.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): The assessment evaluated 707 district hospitals on 10 KPIs based on data from 2017-18.
- Number of functional hospital beds per 1,00,000 population
- Ratio of doctors, nursing staffs and paramedical staff in position to Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) norm;
- Proportion of support services available
- Proportion of core health care services available
- Proportion of diagnostic services available
- Bed occupancy rate
- C-section rate
- Surgical productivity index
- OPD per doctor
- Blood bank replacement rate
Key Findings:
Overall, 75 district hospitals across 24 States and Union Territories emerged as top performers on indicators ranging from availability of beds, medical and paramedical staff, core health and diagnostic testing services to outputs such as bed occupancy rate and number of surgeries per surgeon.
Beds per Population: On an average, a district hospital had 24 beds for 1,00,000 people.
- For the assessment, it was set that a hospital should have 22 beds for that many people (IPHS 2012 guidelines).
- The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends five hospital beds for every 1,000 people.
Doctor-to-Bed Ratio: Only 27% of the total 707 districts assessed met the doctor-to-bed ratio of 29 doctors per 100 beds in a hospital.
Ratio of Paramedical Staff: Only 399 hospitals were found to have a ratio of paramedical staff in position as IPHS norms laid down (100 paramedical staff for 500 bed hospital).
Support Services: On an average, every district hospital in India had 11 support services, compared to the required 14.
Diagnostic Testing Services: Only 21 hospitals fulfilled the criteria of having all diagnostic testing services available.
Bed Occupancy: 182 hospitals out of the 707 had bed occupancy of 90% or more
OPD Patients: On an average, a doctor in a district hospital attends to 27 OPD patients.
Pondicherry tops the list; Bihar stands last
The Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) 2012 guidelines recommend district hospitals to maintain at least 22 beds per one lakh population (based on district population average of 2001 Census).
The NITI Aayog in its report 'Best Practices in the Performance of District Hospitals' has revealed that Pondicherry has an average of 222 hospital beds per one lakh population, making it the highest in the country followed by Andaman & Nicobar Islands (200) and Ladakh (150).
- The report has also importantly stated that Bihar holds the lowest number of beds, six, which was significantly below the advised count.
The report by the NITI Aayog also stated that 15 states and UTs had failed to keep up with the average number of beds in a district hospital, which was lower than 22 beds per 1 lakh population as recommended by the IPHS 2012 guidelines.
Here is the list, in ascending order:
Bihar (6)
Jharkhand (9)
Telangana (10)
Uttar Pradesh (13)
Haryana (13)
Maharashtra (14)
Jammu & Kashmir (17)
Assam (18)
Andhra Pradesh (18)
Punjab (18)
Gujarat (19)
Rajasthan (19)
West Bengal (19)
Chhattisgarh (20)
Madhya Pradesh (20)
National Health Policy 2017:
The policy aims to achieve universal access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence.
It intends to gradually increase public health expenditure to 2.5% of the GDP by 2025.
It also envisages a three-dimensional integration of AYUSH systems encompassing cross referrals, co-location and integrative practices across systems of medicines.
Source : PIB
Report PDF - Check Here
