India needs a dedicated healthcare regulatory framework that gives patients access to transparent, comparable information on hospital quality, outcomes and costs, said Shailaja Chandra, Former Chief Secretary, Government of NCT of Delhi, during her plenary address at the 6th edition of ETHealthWorld’s Healthcare Leaders Summit.
Chandra acknowledged the role of private equity and foreign capital in expanding India’s hospital infrastructure, arguing that such investment should not automatically be viewed negatively. “There is nothing wrong with PE investment. The country cannot [grow] without it,” she said, adding that external investors can also strengthen governance, questioning and operating standards.
Her concern, however, was the absence of a healthcare regulator focused specifically on consumer protection. “We do not have a regulator for the healthcare sector,” she said, contrasting healthcare with sectors such as telecom, power and civil aviation.
Chandra argued that general consumer protection mechanisms cannot substitute for a specialised healthcare regulatory or grievance-redressal system. She recalled advocating for a dedicated medical tribunal when the Consumer Protection Act was introduced in 1986, maintaining that medical negligence and healthcare-related complaints require specialised consideration.
Hospital boards must own quality
Drawing on her experience serving on hospital boards, Chandra said governance discussions can become disproportionately focused on financial performance and reputational risks, while quality and patient satisfaction are often left to management.
“Boards have to take the responsibility,” she said, arguing that clinical quality indicators should become a regular part of board-level oversight rather than depend on individual directors pushing for them.
She cited hospital-acquired infections and time-sensitive clinical outcome indicators as examples of information that hospitals could systematically measure and disclose.
Transparency can strengthen trust
“Transparency is something which is absolutely key to success,” Chandra said, adding that accreditation alone is insufficient because it does not necessarily require hospitals to place comparable patient-centric performance data in the public domain.
She pointed to international models where hospital information on mortality, readmissions, infections, complications, patient experience and emergency waiting times is publicly available, allowing consumers and researchers to compare institutions.
India, she argued, should develop a common reporting format requiring larger hospitals to disclose such data. “If there is a standard by which you can judge a hospital’s performance, trust will go up,” she said.
Public disclosure could also bring greater clarity to debates around pricing and profiteering. Rather than relying on competing claims from hospitals, policymakers or consumers, comparable data could allow evidence to speak for itself.
For Chandra, the next step is therefore not another debate over public versus private healthcare, but creating a system in which quality, outcomes and patient experience become visible, measurable and accountable.
