Historical Neglect
Prakash Singh
Partner | Lateral Thinking | Advising Change Makers to choose Transformative Solutions to Improve Healthcare.
Healthcare professionals have given up hope that India will have budget for healthcare similar to developed countries to cover for historical neglect or future readiness. If you had to give ONLY one suggestion to bureaucrats, right now finalizing interim budget. What will it be?
My favorite suggestion remains the budget for planning, monitoring, evaluation through processes based on data captured through digital systems.
This comes from the study of budget for last few years, where headlines capture the changes in budget from the previous years but never focused on lack of utilization of the allocated budgets. Allocated budget not getting used makes it convenient excuse to not increase the budget allocation.
On root cause analysis, it is clear that one of the main reasons is the lack of sufficient planning while proposing the budget, lack of sufficient monitoring and evaluation based on the archaic processes and paper-based data, which are either incomplete or marred with inaccuracies.
Is above RCA, unknown? Answer is NO! So, question is why it doesn't get fixed? The answer lies in the suggestion.
There is no or not enough budget to build or buy capacity or capabilities to do proper planning, systematic process improvement, digital way for M&E for sustainable progress.
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Prakash Singh is a healthcare professional, and views are personal.
EXL Health, TISS, Mumbai |BE
1 年Insightful message Sir. I want add a point, apart from planning and monitoring. Effective and Efficient adherence to the standards and periodic updates needs to be incorporated in the healthcare implementation program. Also a decentralised ownership at centre level, zonal level etc might help in getting better results
Global Medical Education Regional Manager MENA & ASIA | Operation Smile Inc | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
1 年We all know about problems from years , it’s always the same in every year health budget. My question is how we help and support govt to adopt the solutions. How to fill the gap , how to leverage the existing resources ! Things to ponder!
Digital Health | Immunization | SRHR | Governance | Project Management
1 年Inadequate planning, communication gap from top to bottom , improper utilisation of existing budget , last months financial booking rush and utilizing the remaining budget are the unfortunate and harsh reality of the system , creates compromising outcome. Digitalising the various processes up to PHC level will definitely help to address the issue. I echo with your thoughts. Thanks for sharing Prakash Singh.