New Delhi: What was initially intended to ensure quality and accountability in healthcare has gradually become a liability for hospitals, as highlighted in a recent report by TeamLease Regtech, a Regulatory Technology solutions company. The report provides a glimpse into the complex web of compliance that has increasingly burdened hospitals across the country.
The report stated: ‘Simplifying Compliance Management for Hospitals.’ suggested that, a typical single-entity 50-bed hospital with a diagnostic centre, radiology, pathology lab, and pharmacy with a corporate office in a single state needs to deal with 623 unique compliances. Of these, 421 (67.5 per cent) are at the union level, 192 (31 per cent) are at the state level, and 10 (1.5 per cent ) are at the municipal level.
Once the frequency of compliances is factored in the annual compliance obligations rises to 967, furthermore the hospital must also obtain 100 licenses, permissions, and approvals under 58 acts and these obligations rise exponentially as soon as the business increases its scale of operations and expands its geographical footprint., it added.
Rishi Agrawal, CEO, TeamLease RegTech, says, “The healthcare sector is a critical part of our daily lives with over a billion consultations performed every year across the country and it needs to expand and grow significantly to cater to the growing population as the country will have over 158 million people (15 per cent of the population) over the age of 65 by 2035. However, the complexities of compliance have restrained growth. Even a small hospital needs to deal with at least 967 instances of compliance every year.
“Without proper processes in place to ensure smooth compliance functioning, senior management cannot help but deal with the aftermath of ad-hoc, manual compliance operations. Transforming compliance operations by leveraging digital compliance solutions is the need of the hour, ” Agrawal added.
