Gates Foundation Grant Will Support Study to Develop an Indian Healthcare Ratings System
November 2008
The University of Pennsylvania has received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), which will develop a method of rating healthcare at Indian hospitals. This is the second Gates Foundation grant since 2007 to support CASI, and it comes at a critical time when the healthcare industry in India is experiencing unprecedented growth in both the private and public sectors.
The $374,547 grant will support the initial phase of the project, focusing on the Indian state of Karnataka. CASI researchers will undertake a comprehensive series of consultations with stakeholders including patients and consumers, insurance companies, and healthcare providers. The information will be used to establish a methodology for rating hospitals. If successful, a rating program would be rolled out in a subsequent five-year implementation phase.
Devesh Kapur, director of CASI and Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India at Penn, is the principal investigator on the project. He says: “The Indian healthcare system faces severe problems in virtually every dimension and the rising healthcare needs of a rapidly growing patient population are putting ever greater pressures on resources. We intend to address one aspect of this complex problem, namely the poor quality of service delivery, by creating a healthcare ratings system that provides a sound basis for evaluating the quality of tertiary health providers. We are grateful to the Gates Foundation for supporting this vital project.”
Also participating in the project are three partner organizations in Bangalore: the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), St. John’s Medical College and Hospital (a charitable hospital) and Brickwork India, a knowledge process outsourcing and consulting services company. CASI will also draw on the expertise of researchers from Penn Medicine to introduce perspectives from the U.S. experience.
Also planned in the initial phase is development of an advocacy Web group, which will connect experts and other interested parties from the large global Indian health community with counterparts in India to facilitate efforts to improve Indian healthcare.
About the Center for the Advanced Study of India
Founded in 1992, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania is the only research institution in the United States dedicated to the study of contemporary India. A national resource, it fills an urgent need for objective knowledge of India's politics and society, rapidly changing economy and emerging major power. The Center’s key goals are to nurture a new generation of scholars across disciplines and to provide a forum for dialogue among the academic, business, and foreign policy communities.