Abstract

  Indian healthcare service is dominated by the private sector and public funding for healthcare is minimal. The increasing cost of healthcare services brings in hardships to the underprivileged both in terms of accessibility and affordability, pushing many families into debt traps. Despite several survey and analysis reports available on various aspects of healthcare service in India, a practical analysis of the cost components and their relative contribution to the hospital bills is scanty. This study has been carried out considering the criticality of finding the real cost enhancement components of healthcare. Hospital bills of random cases from India and abroad have been subjected for cost-split analysis under four heads like diagnostics, doctors’ consultation fees, medicines, and hospital facilities. The study has revealed hospital facilities as the top-ranking cost component (45%) followed by medicines (26%), diagnostics (24%) and doctors’ consultation (5%) in the Indian context. The pattern is slightly different in the other countries, with hospital facilities on top (45%), followed by diagnostics (22%), doctors’ consultation fees (19%) and medicines (14%). Hence there is a contrast in the hospital fees components other than hospital facilities between India and other countries compared. Doctors’ consultation fees ranked the least in India and last but one in other countries, with a large difference between them. Costs of the medicines and diagnostics are the real components contributing to the enhanced cost of hospital expenses in India.

Keywords: Hospital Fees; Cost-Split Analysis; Diagnostics; Medicines; Hospital Facilities

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Citation

Citation: Sumangala Bhat K. “Deciphering the Healthcare Expense with Focus on the Real Cost of Doctors to Patients in India". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 4.10 (2020): 07-10.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Sumangala Bhat K. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.