Best practices in the performance of District Hospitals in India
NITI Aayog undertook this novel exercise on the assessment of the performance of District Hospitals across the country for the financial year 2017-18 in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, NABH and WHO Country Office for India. The assessment framework covers 10 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across the domains of Structure and Output. A total of 707 district hospitals across all States and Union Territories participated in the performance assessment. The framework classifies hospitals in three categories namely Small Hospitals (less than or equal to 200 beds), Mid-sized Hospitals (between 201-300 beds) and Large Hospitals (more than 300 beds). Three top-performing district hospitals in each of the hospital categories across the 10 KPIs were identified and their best practices collected and documented. In all, 75 district hospitals across 24 States and Union Territories emerged as top performers on indicators ranging from availability of beds, medical and paramedical staff, core health and diagnostic testing services to outputs such as bed occupancy rate and number of surgeries per surgeon etc. We believe that this country-wide assessment of district hospitals will serve as a valuable resource for them to learn best practices from each other in a spirit to improve their performance. It will also provide an opportunity to showcase progress.