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Digital health mission & mental health initiative welcome, but various demands still remain unaddressed: Healthcare industry
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Gireesh Babu, New Delhi
February 02 , 2022
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A push on the Digital Health Mission and the mental health initiative announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman in the Union Budget on Tuesday is encouraging, though there could have been more support to the industry in terms of finance and credit flow into the sector, among others, feels the healthcare services industry.
The healthcare related announcements in the Union Budget speech were the rolling out of National Digital Health Ecosystem, envisaged by the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) and the rolling out of a National Tele Mental Health Programme.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also said that the accelerated improvement of health infrastructure in the past two years has helped the country to withstand challenges.
Dr Harsh Mahajan, president, Nathealth, which represents the healthcare providers in the country, has said that the speedy roll-out of the digital health mission, move towards provision of unique health identity, upgradation of two lakh Anganwadis, alignment of national skill framework with industry needs and value-based procurement augurs well for modernization of healthcare in the post-pandemic era.
The launch of the telemental programme has brought mental health issues to the forefront which will better the access to quality mental health counselling. Focus on promoting R&D in the field of artificial intelligence, genome sequencing and pharma is a much-needed demand being fulfilled.
“We congratulate the government on record GST mobilization, however, the embedded credit issue in the healthcare sector still remains unaddressed, and we hope to soon find a viable solution acceptable to the government,” he said.
Dr Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, MD & CEO, Fortis Healthcare Ltd, said that it is very encouraging to see the Government’s attention on mental health of the citizens. The proposed National Tele-mental Programme will prove to be beneficial for a large section of the society, enabling access to quality mental health counselling.
“Digital health ecosystem is an area where we would have appreciated some more allocation, especially the National Digital Health ID initiative. Of course, as the programme is a long-term one, I am sure that funds will be made available in the future. That apart, the special status given to data centres is going to have an impact on the digitalization of the healthcare ecosystem, both from the insurers’ as well as the providers’ perspective. I think these are very positive outcomes from the health perspective,” he said.
However, ws the healthcare sector has been at the forefront of battling the Covid pandemic, it would have been great if certain allocations were enhanced, he added.
Mahajan said that there is also a need to create fiscal incentives for investments/PPP in both hospital and out-of-hospital delivery models like telemedicine, home care, senior care and long-term care.
“We request the government to consider lowering cost of financing capital, free flow of credit into the sector especially for the build-up of new infra and capacity and continue investment in incentivising capacity build-up of supply side levers through PPP like medical education, diagnostic and device manufacturing,” he added.
For the National Health Mission, the allocation is to the tune of Rs. 37,000 crore, as against the revised estimate of Rs. 34,447 crore for the year 2021-22.
According to IndiaSpend, a data journalism initiative, the Budget has allocated Rs. 86,200 crore to health, an increase of 0.23 per cent from the revised estimate of Rs. 86,000 crore in the previous budget and 16.5 per cent more than the budget estimate of Rs. 73,931 crore in 2021.
The country needs to spend 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product till 2025 on health, as per the 2017 National Health Policy. In 2021-22, India spent 2.1 per cent of its GDP, based on budget estimates, up from 1.8 per cent in 2020-21, said IndiaSpend in its twitter account quoting the Economic Survey 2022.
The government has allocated Rs. 15,730 crore under the India Covid-19 emergency response and health system preparedness package in its revised 2021 budget and for the Budget 2022-23, there are no funds allocated under this head. The government allocated Rs. 6412 crore to Ayushman Bharat, about the same as in the Budget Estimate of 2021 but higher than the revised Rs. 3,199 crore, it added.
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