Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore (IIM-B) Centre for Public Policy organizes a research on the issues and challenges in public healthcare. In the same context, intended to offer solutions for efficiency, ‘The Fostering Knowledge-Implementation Links Project’ between the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Karnataka and the IIM-B was commenced and is at present in progress. Under this, attempts to factor evaluations and impact analyses into all policy and programme schemes prior to their scale up are being evaluated.
The public expenditure on health is insufficient. The ration of distribution of health infrastructure and human resources is not in proportion. Also, the access to high quality care (services and health personnel) is both insufficient and unbalanced. Over past two decades the use of public health facilities of the health sector reform has increasingly become inequitable, though less than private facilities. In addition, healthcare costs can deplete but risk protection is limited to only 10 % of the population. These are the research evidences on the issues and challenges in public healthcare, stated Aditi Iyer, research coordinator, Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
According to Iyer, IIM-B’s Centre for Public Policy has a couple of policy directions suggested through research, concerning the gross irregularity in the healthcare space. These consist of significance of planning for the health needs of the population at par with the stage in which they are in the health transition. For this, health information systems need to be efficient and made more resourceful. She also added that the equity metrics are required to be included into strategic planning and monitoring.
Furthermore, there is the need of an inclusive human resource policy in order to undertake the issues of availability and quality. Also, there is the necessity to develop the management of public health systems with an aim to ensure quality, efficiency, accountability, besides, the creation of an overarching framework to govern public-private partnerships and the private sector in health. It is also essential to strengthen the links between policy and research, develop an adequate and rigorous knowledge base of health-systems research and draw upon this knowledge to inform decision making. This is where The National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) and the State Health Systems Resource Centre (SHSRC) could play key roles.
The research in public policy on health can play a significant part, as it can emphasize an issue as a crisis or as a strong recurrent or usual crisis. It could point out the type of policy response that can effectively tackle the issue. Also, it can estimate the cost-benefit of different policy options apart from evaluating policy and programmatic initiatives. According to Iyer, the sufficiency of existing research is likely to tackle a crisis, specify a type of policy and assess programmatic initiatives to some extent. However, these facts can sometimes fall short. Besides, there is also complexity in resolving mismatch in time frames and scarce institutional mechanisms to engage with research.
