PGI organizing Four Day National Workshop on Costing of Health Care Services in India

By Samachar Vishesh News

Chandigarh 10^th December:- The Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health began a four day National Workshop on Costing of Healthcare Services from December 10^th-13^th, 2019 in collaboration with Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.The workshop is the third in its series for capacity building in health system costing, an emerging area in the field of public health. The workshop is being done as part of a large national study being carried out by PGI in collaboration with the DHR to estimate the cost of packages under Ayushman Bharat PMJAY Scheme, informed Dr Shankar Prinja who is the Additional Professor of Health Economics at PGI. He further informed that the study is being done in 14 states of India and covers nearly 100 hospitals from both public and private sector. 

Prof Arun Kumar Aggarwal, who inaugurated the workshop, stated that healthcare costing is a very important domain in the field of public health and the trajectory of professional growth of participants of the workshop is going to be phenomenal. He welcomed the participants comprising of senior researchers, academicians and faculty members from NEIGRIHMS Shillong, Meghalaya, PGIMS Rohtak, Haryana and SSMC, Rewa, Madhya Pradesh.

The workshop holds significant importance in view of the Government of India’s Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, which requires adequate information on cost of various treatments/procedures for making informed choices and determining the package rates for the same. In CHSI Phase I,840 packages were costed and in the current phase II all the remaining packages under AB-PMJAY will be costed across 14 states. Currently, there is a paucity of evidence on health system cost of service delivery in India. The evidence generated on cost of healthcare services will have multiple potential uses like undertaking health technology assessment studies, efficiency assessment, scale up of healthcare services and designing benefit package for universal health coverage.