Few days ago I visited a hospital in Pune and by chance had a chat with a patient . The patient made me to cry as he was struggling to arrange funds for the treatment of his young kid fighting with Cancer and it was a quite big amount. I offered him some amount which was a bare minimum or negligible compared to his requirement and suggested him to look for some NGOs that helps in fund raising for Cancer patients and consoled him to have faith in God. I was fully upset for the whole day thinking about such people across us.
The next morning I was shocked to read a newspaper article which was about the misappropriation of government funds in crores in the form of fake medical bills. It was a case of government hospital that diverted the allocated funds which was actually kept for procuring medicines and various other medical equipment for BPL(Below Poverty Line) patients. Moreover It was done with an intention to clear some fictitious bills of last fiscal. This made me more frustrated thinking about the current messy situation that have not even spared the healthcare industry.
Can there be any solution to improve this situation? This may not be so easy as it needs to be transformed from the grass root level of our system. But still some smart efforts may play wonders who knows.. I hope you can guess. I want to draw your attention towards the Information Technology that has brought a revolution not only in our nation but across the globe.
Today some private players are offering bunch of IT products for healthcare units that not only makes their workflows easier and quicker but also restricts any form of anomalies or malpractices to take place. Though it may not give a guarantee to make an environment corrupt free but still to great extent it can create an impact as it may not be easy to generate computerized fake bills or manipulate the existing bills thereby making the whole process accurate & transparent. Moreover any kind of activity with the software application will reflect to one and all linked with the application. In addition to this for every action some sort of impression or proof will be left behind within the system. So it becomes easy to track or identify the culprit.
Spigot Software offers a complete suite of Healthcare products or what we say a full -fledged Hospital Management System (Hospital Information System, HMS, HMIS, HIS) with a very detailed and elaborate Billing module for hospitals and clinics of any size. It’s a decade old well established organization with a highly experienced management and a team of highly dedicated professionals based out of Bangalore.
So to conclude whatever be the strength or capability a technology may be having, until and unless our attitude and mindset is not in the right track nothing can change in this world and for our every wrong step others will have to suffer unnecessarily.
REBANTA DUTTA
The writer is a Marketing Evangelist @Spigot Software