While the shortage of doctors continues to be a matter of concern, acute shortage of nursing staff post 2011, will be telling, the study added. “Telemedicine is one such innovation, which if used effectively, would help improve the efficiency of doctors and treat more patients,” said Sudhir Nair, head, Crisil Research. While it is difficult to make standalone telemedicine models feasible, an integrated healthcare model would be viable, he added.
At the current ratio of 0.60 allopathic doctors per thousand of population, India is way behind the world average of 1.5. However, alternative medicine is extensively used in the country, especially for chronic diseases. India had an estimated 6,80,384 registered allopathic doctors in 2006 and 7,30,860 registered practitioners/doctors under ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, unani, siddha, and homoeopathy (Ayush). Thus, the ratio of doctors-per-thousand improved to 1.27 in 2006 and this is expected to further improve over the medium-to-longterm.
The study, however, paints a bleak picture on the availability of nursing staff in the country. “With private players investing heavily over the long term and the lack of adequate investments in setting up nursing colleges, an imminent shortage of nursing staff is expected,” Mr Nair added.
The report states that the nurse-perbed ratio in India is 0.87 vis-à-vis the world average of 1.2 nurses per bed, which has been arrived at based on data from the World Health Organisation (WHO). However, the ratio considers only the general nursing midwives (GNMs) across countries. Since hospitals employ a mix of GNMs and auxiliary nursing midwives (ANMs), the Crisil study pointed out that considering GNMs alone is incorrect. Taking ANMs into consideration, the nurse-to-bed ratio was 1.4 in 2006.
Quelle/Source: The Economic Times, 19.09.2007
