The Hoo-Ha About the Clinical Establishment Act

The Indian healthcare system needs and calls for a 180 degrees change in its delivery system to make it affordable for all. Growing anxiety and lack of trust in physicians are forcing people to use universal search engines like google for their ailments.

As a tool to improve healthcare quality, the Central government passed the Clinical Establishment Act on 17th August 2010. This move was to regulate and register all clinical establishments –private and public sectors, including single doctor clinics based on minimum standards which will include them to display rates of the services provided by them. This will also prevent quackery by unqualified doctors.

Although the Act came into force in 2012, five years down the line, neither the central nor the state government has succeeded in setting standards. At present, the Act that is mentioned under article 252 of the constitution is adopted in 14 States and Union Territories. But despite them adopting it, none implemented it. Indian Medical Association which constitutes a majority of the private sector strongly opposed the Act. According to them the Act is against the constitutional right to freedom to practice and takes away the independence of the profession. Mounting costs of private hospitals make private healthcare inaccessible to many. Despite capping rates of scheduled drugs and medical devices; corporate hospitals have found a way around to make equal profits as before. They use huge profit margins of about 700% between the stock cost and maximum retail price.

After a series of analysis, health care professionals along with healthcare advocates are now thinking of setting a standard of price range(margin) of about 20 per cent for medical services and procedures and concentrating on the costing mechanism. According to them just fixing prices of the drug and medical devices is a piecemeal approach and will not help.

Will the costing structure be made? Will the private health sector look into the costing structure and provide reasonably priced services to make it affordable for all? And if Yes; When?