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Satarupa Bandyopadhyay
Satarupa Bandyopadhyay is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Bethune College, Kolkata, India. She has a Master’s degree from the University of Calcutta with specialisation in Econometrics and Statistics. Recently, she has completed her Ph.D. from the same University. She has a special interest in health economics, and is working on different projects funded by the Department of Health and Family Welfare of Government of West Bengal. Along with Dr Arijita Dutta and Dr Arpita Ghose, she has published a policy document on ‘Hospital Efficiency in West Bengal.
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Ensuring access to medicines through PPPs
To address the issue of low access to basic medicines by the general public, the state government of West Bengal introduced Fair Price Medicine Shops in secondary and tertiary hospitals through a Public Private Partnership model. This column finds that while there is scope for improving the coverage of patients and availability of medicines, the programme has been successful in reducing out-of-pocket expenditures on medicines.
Analysing efficiency of government hospitals in West Bengal
Given the insufficient public investment in the health sector in India, optimal utilisation of resources in the sector is crucial. This column analyses the efficiency of secondary government hospitals in West Bengal. It finds a huge slack in the use of resources such as doctors. With better monitoring, hospitals will be able to serve more patients with existing resources.