Date: 10/04/2023

Relevance: GS-2: Issues Relating to the Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Key Phrases: G20, Respectful Healthcare, Compassionate Leadership, Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, Ayushman Bharat Health Account, Universal Health Care, Primary Health Care, Asthana Conference, Berlin Declaration 2017, Alma-Ata Declaration on PHC 1978, Sustainable Development Goal, Affordable and Comprehensive Health Care system.

Context:

• As part of its multi-pronged strategy to become a developed nation by 2047, India has made rapid progress in both health and healthcare.
  • We are witnessing a digital boom, which has been a game changer - especially where universal health coverage is concerned.
• The G20 presidency for 2023 is not just an occasion to show India’s growing stature in the international forum, but also an opportunity for setting an agenda for healthcare that has been one of the priority areas for G20 deliberations since 2017.

Key Highlights:

• The G20 has health finance in its financial stream and health systems development in the Sherpa stream.
• The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (launched by the government nearly two years ago) is moving quickly to ensure that every person at the last mile has access to quality healthcare.
• ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) is slated to revolutionize the healthcare sector and significantly improve the overall healthcare experience.
  • The push for healthcare digitisation, infrastructure, coverage and other inputs is showing a clear improvement in multiple healthcare metrics.

Respectful Universal Health Care:

• The concept of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) was born in the 2000s to prevent catastrophic medical expenditures due to secondary and tertiary level hospital services by universalising health insurance coverage.
  • The UHC has been the big global approach for health systems strengthening since 2010, also adopted in 2015 as the strategy for Sustainable Development Goal-3 on ensuring healthcare for all at all ages.
• Universal health coverage requires that health services are not only available, affordable and accessible but also that they are rendered to every person in an acceptable, compassionate and respectful manner- which is a determinant of the quality of care.

Need for Respectful Healthcare:

• Abundant research has established that “healthcare” is not just about the treatment of the disease or availability of infrastructure to enable treatment, but also about the overall wellness of the person.
  • There are several instances that reveal how respectful healthcare played a vital role in fast-tracking the recovery of a patient, adding grist to the belief that patient experience has to be at the centre of all solutions in an industry as personal and service-oriented as healthcare.
• Healthcare is a perpetually evolving, stressful and high-risk industry, which lays a vast burden on healthcare providers.
• This is where the ability of the health providers to navigate and manage the situation compassionately and deliver respectful care comes into play.

Need of Hour:

• For respectful healthcare to become integral to our healthcare system, there is a need to ensure that compassionate leadership is built within the public healthcare system on priority.
  • The Dalai Lama has consistently stressed that we need compassion today more than ever.
  • Compassion is the quiet, beating heart of the entire healthcare system.
• During Covid, we witnessed multiple acts of compassion from doctors, nurses, and frontline workers.
  • However, such acts should be the norm and not a result of extreme circumstances.
  • Hence, this requires multi-pronged and out-of-the-box approaches.
• To successfully integrate compassion into the system at every stage, it is necessary to build a curriculum and deliver it to those responsible for administering health care respectfully.
  • While the curriculum itself is a quantum leap towards building compassionate leadership, institutionalizing it will also bring in real change.
  • Therefore, Every academic institution and every department mandated with the responsibility to deliver health-related learning (be it medical/nursing colleges or government departments for building learning and capacities of other healthcare workers) should develop and adopt compassion-based curricula.
• To make compassionate leadership the core of the healthcare system, state and regional health institutions must also be built with the capacity to deliver the same.
  • Partnerships with established academia and development sector organizations can enable the organizing of master coaches and master facilitators, thereby creating public goods that can be delivered by all.
• All healthcare providers are expected to carry out a wide range of tasks within the system, which often leads to burnout and impacts patient experience adversely.
  • Hence, it is vital to strengthen systems internally to make respect and compassion intrinsic to the ethos.
• Building a network of compassionate practitioners in every state, district and block hospital is crucial to fan the winds of change by starting with self-compassion first and then moving to compassion for others.
• Valuing and measuring organizational culture is just as critical as patient outcomes.
  • Developing sound metrics to measure culture and employee satisfaction, self-compassion and compassion for the team assume greater significance to building an institution whose foundation is compassion.
• Respectful healthcare is already mentioned in LaQshya guidelines in the National Health Mission (NHM) guidelines.
  • Such guidelines need to be the warp and weft of every policy and every guideline developed by public health authorities to improve patient experience.

Conclusion:

• It is compassionate leadership that can truly realize the importance of respectful healthcare and bring alive the words of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity”.

Source: The Indian Express

Mains Question:

Q.“For respectful healthcare to become integral to our healthcare system, there is a need to ensure that compassionate leadership is built within the public healthcare system on priority.” Critically examine the statement. (250 Words).