Delhi Dialogue Commission to hold meeting on private healthcare

In order to provide policy recommendations to the Delhi government on various areas of public interests, the Delhi Dialogue Commission will organise a Town Hall meeting on private healthcare on April 25 at the Maulana Azad Medical College, which will be inaugurated by Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain. 

The vice-chairman of Delhi Dialogue Commission Ashish Khetan will chair the meeting.  The session will be moderated by Dr Sarika Verma and Dr Nimmi Rastogi, coordinators for health, Delhi Dialogue Commission.  The idea is to have a dialogue with all stake-holders in private health enterprises, including doctors, nursing homes, hospitals, labs and diagnostic centres and the people of Delhi.

The issues of overcharging by hospitals, referral practice, over investigation, unwarranted surgeries, registration and standardisation of labs, standardised treatment protocols in the Indian scenario and over the counter drug sales will be discussed.

The idea is to have a constructive platform for discussion and evolve a code of ethics and regulations for the private medical health care sector ushering in an era of accountability and transparency in the industry.

The eminent speakers will be Dr Atul Gupta, Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, Dr Rajeev Tandon, the heads of Fortis Healthcare, Apollo Hospitals, Max Healthcare, Sir Gangaram Hospital and Batra Hospital, among others, who will be sharing their views on how to work towards our goal of creating an efficient, accountable and transparent health system in the NCT.  

Medical fraternity is the custodian of trust in civil society. There is need to ensure that here is balance between trust of the citizens and endeavours of the medical fraternity. It is important to seek an alignment between these two and participative discussion is one way of carrying this forward. The Delhi Dialogue Commission was constituted by the Delhi government under the chairmanship of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

With this objective in mind, The Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC) has invited the opinion of Delhi’s citizens to contribute in the domain of private health. Ideas and suggestions can be sent to [email protected].