The Government of India finally approved the new National Health Policy (NHP) 2017. Through this blog I am providing a brief synopsis of this policy.
Objective of the Policy
The main objective of the NHP 2017 is to achieve the highest possible level of good health and well-being, through a preventive and promotive health care orientation in all developmental policies, and to achieve universal access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence.
The policy puts appropriate emphasis on prevention and promotion of good health. The NHP advocates allocating major proportion (two-thirds or more) of resources to primary care followed by secondary and tertiary care. I welcome this statement part as focus on primary care is critical to reducing future burden in the society. However, we need to have strong monitoring systems that health budgets are allocated keeping the focus on prevention.
The policy informs and prioritizes the role of the Government in shaping health systems on the following dimensions:
- investment in health (commitment to increase government health spending to 2.5% of GDP in time bound manner)
- organization and financing of healthcare services
- prevention of diseases and promotion of good health through cross-sectoral action
- access to technologies
- developing human resources
- encouraging medical pluralism
- building the knowledge base required for better health, financial protection strategies and
- regulation and progressive assurance for health
The roadmap of the NHP 2017 is predicated on public spending and provisioning of a public healthcare system that is comprehensive, integrated and accessible to all. The Policy seeks to reach everyone in a comprehensive, integrated way to move towards wellness. It aims at achieving universal health coverage and delivering quality health care services to all at an affordable cost.
The policy also looks at reforms in the existing regulatory systems both for easing manufacturing of drugs and devices, to promote Make in India, as also for reforming medical education.
The policy seeks to ensure improved access and affordability of quality secondary and tertiary care services through a combination of:
- public hospitals and strategic purchasing in healthcare deficit areas from accredited non-governmental healthcare providers,
- achieve a significant reduction in out of pocket expenditure due to healthcare costs,
- reinforce trust in the public healthcare system and
- influence operation and growth of private healthcare industry as well as medical technologies in alignment with public health goals
The policy emphasizes reorienting and strengthening the Public Health Institutions across the country, so as to provide universal access to free drugs, diagnostics, and other essential healthcare. While the policy seeks to reorient and strengthen the public health systems, it suggests examining afresh at strategic purchasing from the private sector and leveraging their strengths to achieve national health goals. The policy looks forward to have a stronger partnership with the private sector.
The NHP, 2017 advocates a positive and proactive engagement with the private sector for critical gap filling towards achieving national goals. It envisages private sector collaboration for strategic purchasing, capacity building, skill development programmes , awareness generation, developing sustainable networks for the community to strengthen mental health services, and disaster management. The policy also advocates financial and non-incentives for encouraging the private sector participation.
It also advocates extensive deployment of digital tools for improving the efficiency and outcome of the health care system and proposes the establishment of National Digital Health Authority (NDHA) to regulate, develop and deploy digital health across the continuum of care.
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