The Covid-19 pandemic has created a terrible disruption and has left an impact on the healthcare industry throughout the globe. The only impact that we faced is lockdown. It has caused triggers and panics in various fields like academics, business and so on. The first thing that strikes our mind is the frontline warriors (the doctors, nurses and all the medical staffs) who has taken this unprecedented pandemic as a challenge for the mankind. Based on current reports, an impact can be analyzed in healthcare sectors.
How The Private Sectors Helped The Government?
As we know the government cannot fight the pandemic alone. It needs support and help in matters like testing, diagnosis, N95 masks, PPEs and so on. The private sectors play the role of major stakeholder.
The private sectors and healthcare industry in India has rendered help to the government, given support for the tests to be conducted, also helped in preparing isolated beds for the victims of Covid-19 and also helped in arranging medical equipment (like testing kits, masks, PPEs, oxygen and ventilators) and skilful staffs.
Burden On Private Healthcare Providers
Even though the private sectors is prepared to face every eventuality but still there are toils and burdens in their way- like for instance, there are additional investments and also there are cases of treatment of the patients, that needs to be handled by them. The second thing that came into view is there is a bane too; that is the downfall in the cases of elective surgeries and international patients.
The sectors are witnessing heavy loss in terms of business and economy; however the cost is kept fixed.
As the government is reliable on the private sectors, the private healthcare industry gets benefit from the increasing healthcare insurance awareness programmes .
Impact On India’s Medical Devices Industry
Our country is fully dependent on China in the process of importation of various medical equipment like gloves, syringes, orthopaedic implants, bandages, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging devices.
Now, India is finding difficulty in manufacturing the raw materials from China (due to the current crisis in China), so manufacturing process has been affected. This is how the pandemic has hit the medical devices industry.
The profitability of the Indian companies importing medical devices has been adversely affected. This can lead to the upward pressure on the prices of medical devices in a short term. This is all about the status of the Indian Medical Devices Industry.
Impact on the Healthcare Industry – A Statistical Analysis
The coronavirus disease has caused tremors of fear in the minds of the people. It had turned into a global pandemic just within 90 days, infecting more than 1.7 million people in more than 200 countries, nearly about 100,000 deaths and with its power it has brought the world to a standstill.
Statistical analysis depicts the disruption caused by the unprecedented pandemic.
About 53 per cent of the countries in the world have surveyed completely or partially disrupted jobs for hypertension treatment; 49 per cent disruption for the treatment of diabetes; 42 per cent for the treatment of cancer and 31 per cent for problems related to heart.
In about 94 per cent countries, the ministry of health staff working in the area of non-communicable diseases(NCDs) has been reassigned to support COVID-19.
The major reasons for the disruptions caused are due to scarcity in medicines, diagnosis and other technologies. Throughout the globe, about two-thirds of the countries stated that they included NCD services in their various programmes related to Covid-19 cases.
For the provision of NCD services in the healthcare plan and covid19 relief, allocation of additional funds have been started by more than 17 per cent of the countries. There are about 58 per cent countries using telemedicine’s (consultations done through various means like online mode or over phones); however countries where the income is quite low, this figure is 42 per cent.
Now coming to mortality rates of the healthcare workers, most of the deaths took place on April 15, 2020 in Italy which was about 44 per cent. In Iran it was 15 per cent, in Philippines 8 per cent, Indonesia 6 per cent, China 6 per cent, Spain 4 per cent, USA 4 per cent and UK 4 per cent.
The reports even showed about 60 per cent of the victims of covid-19 were male. Generally people with lifestyle problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol or with problems related to lungs like asthma, bronchitis and so on or people with a weak immune system are more prone to deaths due to Covid- 19.
Amidst this period of exacerbating fear, there is an opportunity to stabilize for the current crisis as well as to state the challenges related to revenue capture and productivity. This opportunity can be grabbed via technology.
The health care sectors took technological help in order to free the physicians from their mundane documentation tasks. Despite the fact that there was a deep impact on the healthcare industry but the private and public players rose up to innovate new technologies to fight the covid-19.
One of such innovative app is the Arogya Setu App, which is playing a major role in tracking the covid19 transmission. It is designed by the government of India; a simple software mobile application which played a significant role in the process of connecting common people with the health care services.
Another way by which technology proved classic was in the process tele medication. In most of the countries, advice related to health issues is being done by online means.
Growth of Hospitals, Clinics and Pharmacy
With the help of the above statements, it can be said that there has been a strong growth of hospitals, clinics and pharmacies. Now coming to the pharmacies, it has been stated that “strong growth in the pharmaceutical business saves the day for Apollo Hospitals“; in other words the pandemic banged the OPD services of Apollo hospitals creating a heavy loss at the operating levels, however the pharmacy department surged 40 per cent at this situation.
Similarly the number of hospitals, clinics and nursing homes are increasing day by day so as to save the patients from the sufferings of covid-19. Isolation wards with proper medical facilities are been set up in every healthcare centres in order to treat the patients properly.
Thus, the impact on the healthcare industry due to covid-19 is massive, dreadful and dynamic which is unmeasurable, causing a great hamper in the routines of the daily lives. However, the doctors, nurses and medical staffs are taking it as a key challenge, helping in the act of constructing a healthy place for us to live in.
