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. 2023 Aug 16:11:1178160.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1178160. eCollection 2023.

Developing Standard Treatment Workflows-way to universal healthcare in India

Ashoo Grover  1 , Balram Bhargava  2 , Saumya Srivastava  1 , Lokesh Kumar Sharma  3 , Jerin Jose Cherian  4 , Nikhil Tandon  5 , Sudha Chandershekhar  6 , Roderico H Ofrin  7 , Henk Bekedam  7 , Deepika Pandhi  8 , Aparna Mukherjee  4 , Rupinder Singh Dhaliwal  1 , Manjula Singh  4 , Kavitha Rajshekhar  4 , Sudipto Roy  9 , Reeta Rasaily  1   3 , Deepika Saraf  10   11 , Dhiraj Kumar  9 , Neeraj Parmar  9 , Sushil Kumar Kabra  12 , Dhruva Chaudhry  13 , Ashok Deorari  14 , Radhika Tandon  12 , Rajdeep Singh  15 , Binod Khaitan  12 , Sandeep Agrawala  12 , Sudeep Gupta  16 , Satish Chandra Goel  17 , Anil Bhansali  18 , Usha Dutta  19   20   21 , Tulika Seth  12 , Neeta Singh  12 , Shally Awasthi  22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31 , Amlesh Seth  12 , Jeyaraj Pandian  32 , Vivekanand Jha  33 , Sudhanshu Kumar Dwivedi  34 , Reva Tripathi  15 , Alok Thakar  12 , Surinder Jindal  18 , Banglore Nanjudaiah Gangadhar  35 , Anjali Bajaj  36 , Mohan Kant  37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44 , Aniket Chatterjee  36
Affiliations

Developing Standard Treatment Workflows-way to universal healthcare in India

Ashoo Grover et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Primary healthcare caters to nearly 70% of the population in India and provides treatment for approximately 80-90% of common conditions. To achieve universal health coverage (UHC), the Indian healthcare system is gearing up by initiating several schemes such as National Health Protection Scheme, Ayushman Bharat, Nutrition Supplementation Schemes, and Inderdhanush Schemes. The healthcare delivery system is facing challenges such as irrational use of medicines, over- and under-diagnosis, high out-of-pocket expenditure, lack of targeted attention to preventive and promotive health services, and poor referral mechanisms. Healthcare providers are unable to keep pace with the volume of growing new scientific evidence and rising healthcare costs as the literature is not published at the same pace. In addition, there is a lack of common standard treatment guidelines, workflows, and reference manuals from the Government of India. Indian Council of Medical Research in collaboration with the National Health Authority, Govt. of India, and the WHO India country office has developed Standard Treatment Workflows (STWs) with the objective to be utilized at various levels of healthcare starting from primary to tertiary level care. A systematic approach was adopted to formulate the STWs. An advisory committee was constituted for planning and oversight of the process. Specialty experts' group for each specialty comprised of clinicians working at government and private medical colleges and hospitals. The expert groups prioritized the topics through extensive literature searches and meeting with different stakeholders. Then, the contents of each STW were finalized in the form of single-pager infographics. These STWs were further reviewed by an editorial committee before publication. Presently, 125 STWs pertaining to 23 specialties have been developed. It needs to be ensured that STWs are implemented effectively at all levels and ensure quality healthcare at an affordable cost as part of UHC.

Keywords: Standard Treatment Workflows (STWs); disease; public health; quality health care (QHC); universal health coverage (UHC).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Process of developing STW.
Figure 2
Figure 2
State-wise distribution of experts.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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