In Urban and Rural India, Study Identifies Harmful and Unnecessary Practices in Health Facilities

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A new post, Above All, Do No Harm: The Sad State of Health Care Quality in Rural Madhya Pradesh, on the Center for Global Development Blog offers an informative summary of a recent publication, In Urban And Rural India, A Standardized Patient Study Showed Low Levels Of Provider Training And Huge Quality Gaps, in Health Affairs that explores major challenges with quality of care in public and private health facilities in India.

From the blog post:

The study finds serious deficits in quality. Interactions between patients and providers were short (3.6 minutes on average) and the emphasis in both sectors was to give several medications to the patient as quickly as possible.

Across all cases, the correct treatment protocol was followed 30% of the time, while unnecessary or harmful treatment was prescribed or dispensed 42% of the time. Only one-third of providers articulated a diagnosis, correct or incorrect. When a diagnosis was issued, close to half were wrong, and only 12% were fully correct.

What’s going on?

Read the full post on the Center for Global Development Blog.

Access the full publication in Health Affairs.