Home Healthcare Management and Practice by Pallavi, Sonali, and Sunil

India is undergoing a significant shift in healthcare demands, particularly in the realm of home healthcare. The shift can be majorly attributed to demographic changes, including an ageing population and a rise in chronic illnesses. For these areas of concern, home healthcare aims to improve patient outcomes, enhance quality of life, reduce hospital readmissions, and provide holistic care in a comfortable and familiar environment. However, despite this steadily increasing demand, the field of home healthcare in the country remains significantly under-researched.

Pallavi Gupta, Sonali Randhawa, and Sunil Nandraj from the Health Systems Governance team at HSTP explored this field in their recent article “The Home Healthcare Boom: Opportunities and Obstacles in India’s Changing Healthcare Landscape”. The article discusses the several critical concerns and challenges that persist in the provision of home healthcare services ranging from accessibility, availability, regulatory issues, standards of care, costs, safety, and grievance redressal mechanisms for both service providers and users. The lack of information about the services, providers, and organizations offering home healthcare services further compounds these challenges.

From their analysis, the team has recommended the need to redefine the concept of "home" as a viable site for healthcare delivery and as a legitimate "workplace" for care providers. The article also advocates for standardised protocols and guidelines for delivering various forms of care at home, emphasizing the diversity of conditions that might require home-based care. It also prioritises the necessity for uniform human resource practices in deploying care providers, transparent cost calculations and regulations, and the establishment of effective grievance redressal mechanisms for users, providers, and organisations.

The article calls for further research in the domain, including a deep dive into the perspectives of both users and providers, refining the training and supervision protocols for care providers, and scrutinizing the financing, accreditation, and overall quality of home healthcare services.

Team HSTP is committed to working on the recommendations outlined in the article. To avail copies of the article and our research, please write to us at communications@hstp.org.in.