Shaily Baag, LLM, Constitution and Administrative Law, Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar
ABSTRACT
This article is on the issues, aspects, and journey of empowered consumers in the medical sector in India. We uncover four aspects of empowering the consumers. These are- the components of the information that empowers the consumer and is embedded in the consumer protection; acceptability of the empowerment by all the parties; the channel through which the consumer get this information to do self-determination informed choice, and the comparative international scenario to the Indian context.
We realise that this empowerment is not yet available to government hospital consumers who are not treated as consumers whereas this is available in countries like US since the 1980s. We also realise that it was a very long journey before empowerment was finally accepted by the medical service providers in India and yet we have left behind a major segment of our citizen. We find that technology, social media, competitive market, new demography of the consumer today are playing a major role in the development of different channels to improve the availability of information to the consumer for effective empowerment. It has brought in health information management and have reduced information gap.
We suggest increasing competition all over India on region basis, better innovations for availability and quality of information for better disclosures including setting up of government websites on drug prices, price reference index and on hospital/service provider advice. We conclude with the realisation that while prospective choice of consumers have received all the attentions and have developed well, the responsive consumerism has not received the required attentions from the policymakers. It requires a constructive role from the judiciary, non-governmental organisations, pressure groups, press and education in influencing the consumers and the policymakers in developing an effective empowerment.
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