Is there a need for home healthcare in India?
Delivering quality clinical services, backed by high-end technology and training, to the people of Kerala.
6.04.2018 marked a red-letter day for Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. KIMS and India Home Health Care (IHHC) launched a partnership with the objective of providing the highest standard in home healthcare, in the comfort of the patient’s own home. A partnership that will enhance the quality of home healthcare in South India. A valuable partnership, with the laudable goal of providing the best in clinical care, assuring the quickest possible outcomes, at the most affordable cost. A much-needed medical initiative that will be a value-addition to the medical infrastructure in the country, and specifically in Kerala.
The state of the nation in the healthcare sector.
Over the centuries, the health of its people has defined the health of a nation. It is generally accepted as a fundamental human right and a worldwide social goal. It is necessary for the realisation of essential human needs and to achieve a better quality of life. The 30th World Health Assembly (in 1977) decided that the chief social target of governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) in the coming years should be “the attainment by all the citizens of the world by the year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead a socially and economically productive life”.
In any country, health is an important indicator of economic development. Improvement in the health status of a people reflects the socio-economic development of the country - shaped by variety of factors such as income and educational levels, life style, health-consciousness, personal hygiene and sanitation facilities, housing and access to good healthcare.
With the passage of time, India has progressed in developing its health care and treatment facilities. The growth in this sector has led to the use of new equipment, methods and facilities. With the numerous state-of-the-art facilities available in India, most hospitals now undertake a lot of complex procedures and treat numerous, quite complicated diseases. Indian hospitals now deliver complete safety and protection for all types of treatment. India has progressed vastly in this sector and offers some of the best treatment as compared to other countries.
This ability to deliver on the promise of providing the best in medical care is now being taken a step further: KIMS and IHHC (part of Bayada Home Health Care, USA) are delighted to partner together in providing hospital-quality care at home - to help patients recover better and faster in the comfort of their own homes. Other than the emotional and psychological security of recovering at home, home healthcare helps to reduce readmissions to hospitals because patients still get the right quality of medical attention and rehabilitative care at home. This also helps to reduce medical costs for patients, in the long term, while cutting down the time spent in hospitals.
The state of healthcare in Kerala
Kerala has a long history of organized health care. When the state was founded in 1956, the foundation for a sound healthcare system was already in place. Easy accessibility and coverage of medical care facilities has played a dominant role in shaping the healthcare status of Kerala..
The growth of the private sector in Kerala was made possible by the public sector - which paved the way for its development by sensitizing the population to the need for sophisticated healthcare and thus creating demand.
The Human Development Report (the first ever, published in 2002), puts Kerala on top of all the other states in India, because of the easy accessibility and spread of medical care facilities in the state. Today, with the rapid growth of private hospitals offering quality services that match international standards , healthcare in Kerala is growing by leaps and bounds. It is this rapid growth in private super-specialty hospitals that has accelerated the drive for technology infusion and administrative shake-up in public health. Investments in super-specialty hospitals in Kerala, in the last five years, has been over Rs.500 crores.
The private sector has played, and is still playing, a dominant role in India's healthcare delivery system. Factors such as the New Economic Policy, influx of medical technology, the growing deficits in the public sector hospitals and the rise of an affluent middle class, have all contributed to the private sector’s large-scale growth in the last decade.
