The role of professionally run non-profit private organisations in providing quality healthcare and higher education was underlined by Dr Rakesh Mohan, chairman of ICRIER, here today at the national service sector conclave organised by CII's Institute of Quality.
The two-day conclave brings together a galaxy of leaders from the best run institutions in four service areas - healthcare, education, financial services and distribution and channelling (connecting markets and people) - to come up with recommendations on promoting excellence and global competitiveness in these areas.
The non-profit making private sector is a key provider of health and education in the US. The better universities and speciality and teaching hospitals there have a governance mechanism in place, are run in a businesslike manner and are totally autonomous even while getting 30-40 per cent public funding.
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With the public sector in Indian healthcare obviously in mind he also noted that in the US all services to the health and education sectors, whether in the public or private sectors, are privately provided.
Outsourcing of non-clinical services drew attention from two speakers. P K Dave, director of All Indian Institute of Medical Science, admitted that the unions posed a problem for such outsourcing but these were eventually overcome. Mahendra Jain, administrator of the Karnataka Health Systems Development Project, pointed to the outsourcing of non-clinical services as an element of emerging public-private partnership in Karnataka's healthcare system.
Prathap Reddy, chairman of Apollo Hospital, outlined India's healthcare destination as establishing capability in world class health care delivery at the same success rate or better than the benchmark but at a lower cost, with love and compassion thrown in for good measure. If the government gives a little help this will happen in 10 years, if it does not then it will happen automatically in 25 years.
His one criticism of Indian healthcare was that it had not harnessed basic clinical research for new medicines and equipment which draws upon Indian biodiversity. Essential alopathic medicines for blood pressure and chemotherapy came out of the Indian environment decades ago but things have not been taken forward from there.
On bringing people and markets together, Hiren Patel, director of Nirma, described how distribution played a role in the umbrella brand's success. Claiming that the group had one of the most efficient distribution systems in the country, he said it had reached rural areas 15 years ago.
It cost Nirma less than 12 paise to send a cake of soap from Gujarat to Assam when the competition spent 30 paise. It has over the years reduced distribution costs and passed on the benefits to the consumer. Meanwhile, its distributors have prospered, some of them being thrid generation distrubutors of the group.