HYDERABAD: NITI Aayog’s ‘Health Systems for New India- 2019’ report released on Monday has claimed that PHCs and district hospitals in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh can accommodate 75 per cent more patients, provided that the infrastructure is more efficient.
The report intends to prepare a road-map to build a healthcare system for those belonging to the middle class, and will exclude those who are already covered under the Ayushman Bharat scheme that caters to the bottom 40 per cent of the population.
While explaining the relative efficiency of a sample of public sector healthcare facilities, the report took into consideration six states, including Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and mentions that, “If facilities operated at the level of the most efficient facilities in the sample, district hospitals could accommodate around 25 per cent (Gujarat) to over 75 per cent (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) more patients. These results show that even moderate efficiency gains could reap major returns with better use of resources.