As per a report, published in September 2020, by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), proposed National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) has the potential to create incremental economic value of over US$ 200 billion for the health sector over the next 10 years. There will be an increased productivity, which will lead to a further benefit of US$ 200-250 billion to India’s GDP, provided the mission is implemented with better health outcomes.
The report states that a main open digital ecosystem (ODE) will be the driving force behind this healthcare transformation in India. There will be transparency of information with ‘health registries,’ which will act as the single source of information for all stakeholders. All the stakeholders will be able to use interoperable data between different stakeholders, so as to enable patients to share their digital health records across providers. The healthcare outcomes will be further improved by other services like standardised claim processing, digitised prescriptions, and development of patient-centric innovations. Healthcare access will also undergo a major shift with the increased access to digital services like e-consultation, e-diagnostics, e-ICU, and e-pharmacy with increased demand for Out-Patient Department (OPD) care. With reduction in administrative costs, affordability will also increase as competition. This will result in making healthcare sector more affordable as these will be reduction in administrative costs and increase competition in the sector. Patients’ trust will enhance due to health registries because patients would be able to select service providers as per their requirements and preferences.
Diagnosis rates will increase for medical conditions because of higher OPD and increase in patient’s self-involvement in their care (consumerism). Besides, health insurers’ business will get transformed basically due to overall reduction in costs, enhancing managed care like introducing the next generation of insurance products, etc. Other benefits include improved care quality due to patient’s improved behaviour on getting better access to healthcare evolution of new healthcare models based on analytics on aggregated and anonymised data allowing patients wide co-relation between clinician advice and health outcomes, rewards to providers for higher quality care, insurers’ encouragement of patients towards providers with better quality, and so on.
As per the report, the mission will significantly streamline inefficient multi-stakeholder processes and interactions with significant cost savings for all players. Digitisation will simplify providers’ administrative systems-processes and streamline claim filing and processing. The mission will drastically change healthcare market dynamics, challenging existing business models, in which the Centre should play a critical role in laying down the framework including policies, standards, and shaping the overall design of the systems and processes.
The State governments will play a dual role in the new system—ensuring roll-outs of the Health ODE or registration of patients and providers, and driving management change, identifying implications, expediting separation of its role as a provider, payor, and regulator to avoid any conflicts. Expectedly, the consumerism of healthcare with higher patient engagement will get a boost and new players will emerge.
Courtesy: Business Today