Growing Demand For Home Healthcare Services In India
What are home healthcare services?
Home healthcare services are an extension to provide the medical facilities available at hospitals to homes. For patients who are suffering from chronic illness, and are physically disabled, need medical supervision for longer durations. Staying in hospitals for too long can be very depressing for the patients as well as the family members. For the well being of everyone, amassing an assisted care at home can be one new good option which will help in quicker recovery as well as a reduction in the expenses.
We all are very well aware of the fact that how costly medical treatments are. As life expectancy has increased owing to greater facilities, improvement in the treatments and diagnosis, it has also induced a big burden on the income of families. It has been seen that families go bankrupt while paying for the bills in hospitals. It is mentally and physically taxing. The rich can afford the treatments, but the middle class suffers badly. People, on average, spend more than half a fortune on meeting the medical expenses. So, at-home healthcare services are an option that can really bring ease in the lives of patients and their families. As people are getting more and more aware, they are seeking professional help and services for the patients.
Issues in healthcare infrastructure:
- Expensive medical facilities
- The danger of spreading of hospital induced infections and diseases.
- Restricted and fixed visiting hours.
- Shortage of beds and medical equipment.
- Huge pressure on hospitals in their critical care unit.
In the changing times, when lifestyle is changing at a rapid pace, people are getting more prone to illness. Most members of a family are suffering from some of the other diseases, may it be diabetes, hypertension, chronic illness or disability, or COPD.
Why is home healthcare a great option?
- To seek personalized care which is specifically suited to your needs
- Familiar environment
- Cost-effective as 20 to50% of the money can be saved depending on the type of service accessed.
- Saving of time in visiting the patients
- 24×7 attention to the patient.
- Quick recovery as emotional support is much more.
- Interconnectivity through devices and portability of medical equipment
For example
- ICU services are almost 50% cheaper than those provided in the private hospitals. Typically, staying in an ICU of hospitals costs about Rs 35,000 to Rs 50,000 per day. But if you set up an ICU facility at home, it would cost between Rs7,500 to Rs10,000 a day.
- A package of services for recovery from stroke could cost between Rs25,000 to Rs30,000 per month at home compared to Rs 5000 a day in private hospitals.
Now seeing the growing demand for home-based care and professionals, many hospitals have started providing these services like Max Healthcare, a healthcare provider, recently introduced ‘Max@Home.’ It is a home-based healthcare service offering program with a network of 12 hospitals. This program helps in real-time monitoring and connects doctors, managers, staff, and emergency services through technology infrastructure created by industry expert WIPRO.
This is a new sunshine industry, and its market is about to double in this decade. Reports suggest that in 2016 the home health care market in India stood close to $3.20 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow to around $4.46 billion by 2018 and $6.21 billion in 2020, according to CyberMedia Research (CMR) Ltd analysis.
Reasons for the growth of this sector:
There are various reasons for this growth.
- Firstly, an aging population,
- Secondly, a rise in chronic health conditions,
- Thirdly, a popular growing belief among the policymakers and the governments that the home is the ideal place for quicker recovery.
These are a few of the many reasons which have fuelled the demand for this sector, and the expenditures in the residential health care are rising faster than those in most other health care categories since 2013.
Conclusion:
As the industry is growing faster, there is also a need to keep a check on the quality of services provided and to bring them into a regulatory framework so that treatment can be risk-free and ensured.
As the elderly population is growing and needs most of these services, it is important that we train the staff appropriately for this. Proper technology infrastructure will also be needed for the effective delivery of the treatment. A bigger question is also being raised about whether home beds can be a substitute for the hospital beds? All these things have also to be kept in mind while thinking about opting for it.
In India, this is at a nascent stage, and many things have to be looked for and taken care of before we go into a full-fledged business developmental model for this. At home, healthcare services will also be provided to meet the growing demand for long-stay and palliative treatment care even in tertiary specializations like cardiology, oncology, neurology, and orthopedics.