The government is firming up a national quality framework for public and private hospitals, aligned with international standards, an initiative aimed at helping patients make informed choices and push hospitals to improve healthcare quality and safety.
The idea, conceived some years ago, has gained momentum under the new team at the Niti Aayog as the government feels that transparent and audited gradings, benchmarked to international parameters, will improve India’s health ecosystem significantly while also boosting medical tourism in the country.
As part of the initiative, several parameters related to patient safety and specialty specific outcomes will be part of the standardised framework, according to a senior official. “The framework is expected to be ready by the end of this year and grading of hospitals can start as early as the next financial year,” the official told ET on condition of anonymity.
The Niti Aayog last week held a stakeholder consultation, under member M Srinivas, to deliberate on the creation of a credible, sustainable and patient-centric framework, aimed at strengthening the quality of care, patient safety, clinical outcomes and patient experience across different categories of hospitals.
An industry expert, who was part of the deliberations, told ET that patient safety measures could include standard patient experience parameters obtained through patient-reported outcome measures and patient-reported experience measures, along with readmission rates and medication errors.
The plan is to also include sub-indicators, such as post-transplant survival rates and postoperative mortality rates for oncology procedures.
“The foremost benefit of a standardised national framework on quality indicators-which includes patient safety and outcome parameters and serves as a foundation for grading hospitals-will be to patients, who can henceforth make more informed decisions with respect to hospital selection,” said Srimayee Chakraborty, healthcare sector leader, EY-Parthenon India.
“At the same time, a more robust grading will enable hospitals with a higher focus and superior investments in clinical quality and outcomes to truly differentiate themselves from the rest, and enable payors to more objectively build products linked to healthcare outcomes and quality,” he added.
Currently, private hospitals in India must comply with National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers framework for patient safety and clinical quality. However, these reports and outcomes are not publicly disclosed, depriving patients of the transparent data.
By contrast, clinical outcomes and quality indicators under the UK’s National Health Service are reported and audited, helping patients choose hospitals based on the services they need.
