New Delhi: About 80 percent Public health facilities Minimum requirement not met in India Required Standards For infrastructure, manpower, equipment and other norms prescribed by the Govt.

This shocking detail has come to light from a report. Self-Assessment Exercises In a survey conducted by the government, public health facilities in states and union territories under the National Health Mission (NHM) were asked to fill in details such as the number of doctors, nurses or basic medical equipment available with them.

Over two lakh public health facilities, including district hospitals, sub-district hospitals, community health centres, primary health centres and Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (formerly sub health centres), are covered under the NHM – a flagship scheme of the government. Of them, data shared by the government on the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) dashboard shows that 40,451 have filled in key statistics about their respective facilities developed by Open Data Kit – a digital tool. Ministry of Health,

When scoring was done based on the data shared, it was found that only 8,089, or about 20% of the facilities, scored 80% or more, which is required to qualify. IPHS CompliantIn simple words, these facilities had the necessary infrastructure, human resources, medicines, diagnostics, and equipment to provide the desired essential services.

A total of 17,190 (42%) facilities that participated in the self-assessment exercise scored less than 50%, while the remaining 15,172 facilities scored between 50 and 80%. All these details have been put in the public domain on the IPHS dashboard. Self-assessment and its real-time monitoring have been initiated to ensure that healthcare facilities maintain the required standards of infrastructure, equipment and human resources, leading to better health outcomes and promoting a healthier and more equitable society, a senior health ministry official said.

An official said the Centre aims to bring 70,000 healthcare institutions IPHS compliant within the first 100 days of the formation of the new government. “The aim of this self-assessment exercise is to identify the gaps and motivate the states/UTs to fill them with full support from the Centre, so as to improve the quality of services provided to the public,” a senior health ministry official said. He said the self-assessment is the first step and the Centre also plans to conduct surprise inspections to verify the claims being made by healthcare facilities against the norms set by IPHS.

While IPHS assesses health facilities for basic services, National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) is another higher level of assessment that rates them based on best practices such as availability of essential medicines, equipment, waste management, infection control practices, ancillary services and patient rights. While NQAS assessment for district hospitals, sub-district hospitals, community health centres and primary health centres will continue to be done physically, the official said, he has introduced a new provision of virtual assessment for Ayushman Arogya Mandirs which constitute the most number of public health facilities under NHM. The Centre bears 60 per cent of the expenditure in public health facilities under NHM while the rest is borne by the state.