Increasing penetration of health service in rural India through hub and spoke model

Abstract

Our study is based on the Indian health care sector. India is a vast country and nearly 70% of the population resides in villages and small towns. These places do not have access to specialist medical advice and care. For specialist attention they need to travel great distances, spend a lot of time and money and it culminates in 15 to 20 minutes of specialist advice. For large number of the rural population in the low and middle-income groups, more than half of all health care spending is through “out-of-pocket payments.” There is striking inequalities between the health care facilities accessible to the rich and the poor. To add salt to injury, the rising cost of health care is pushing more than 100 million people1 below the poverty line each year around the world. The objective of the study is to find out how far Telemedicine technology has been successful in bridging the gap between urban and rural health care. Has the telemedicine concept succeeded in delivering inclusive health care? The questions that we wanted to answer during the course of study is how far Telemedicine being able to address the issue of accessibility and affordability. We tried to address the issue of whether Telemedicine is India’s option or a necessity. The paper also includes studying Narayana Hrudalaya, Bangalore to understand how “Telecardiology” functions and its impact. We have also tried to find out the various view points of Specialists, General Practitioners and Academicians on Telemedicine and its impact.