Niti Pall - "I’d like to See More Cross-Country Work"

Search

Loading...

News

Latest News

Niti Pall - "I’d like to See More Cross-Country Work"

Chief Medical Officer discusses primary health care in India

Dr Pall at Monday's workshop session in Parker Hall

“I’d like to see more cross-country work,” said Dr Niti Pall, Chief Medical Officer for HCL Healthcare, sitting in the Chinese Room at Schloss Leopoldskron.

Speaking to Salzburg Global on the second day of the session, ‘The Drive for Universal Health Coverage’, Dr Pall revealed how she would like to learn from others and seek innovate ideas.

“The connections and the breadth of experience I met the last time I came was stupendous, and I’m just hoping to get that again here.”

During the second day of discussions, participants discussed how we define and measure value in health care, an approach Dr Pall found insightful.

“It’s not a new idea, but the way it has been articulated at this session was great.“I’m going to be looking at that when we look at how we implement our systems-based approach.”

Four years ago, Dr Pall set up a business called Pathfinder Health India. It provided clinics and primary care training centers, but needed more impact investment capital to continue to scale up.

“The challenge was trying to raise capital for something like primary health care, which commercially doesn’t make money right away.

“Impact investors didn’t know how to measure the impact of that when we started to raise capital.”

Impact investment funds evaluated the business just like a private equity fund would.

“It was more like somebody evaluating a truly commercial venture, looking for returns on investment based on that rather than looking for a return on social impact investment. That took us ages to figure out.”

There are no payer systems in India that pay for primary health care. It’s one of the issues Dr Pall would like to discuss this week.

“I’d like the universal health coverage statement to focus on the payer systems. I’d really like people to be talking about that openly and to be challenging [the] industry.”

Pall joked the reason she set up Pathfinder Health was due to being “completely and utterly mad”.

In reality, inspiration came after Pall fell sick four years ago and was treated by the National Health Service in the UK.

“In the UK, you don’t even talk about universal [coverage]; it’s accepted. When I fell sick, I didn’t have to worry about somebody paying for this.

“I’d get top-class specialists to look after me. I knew that if I needed to go and see my GP, it was all free. And I knew that if a nurse was needed at home, somebody would come home.”

Whilst this level of coverage is perhaps seen as a “given” in the UK, the same cannot be said for India.

“That’s what inspired me to say there’s something wrong here. One in six women in rural India still dies during childbirth. That couldn’t be right.

“A paradigm shift happened in my thinking and I decided to go off and do this thing in India.”

Participants will explore today how to reform health systems in different settings and environments.It is perhaps relevant when considering how universal health coverage might be defined in each country. But Dr Pall said, “We’re all the same. The requirements for universal health coverage are the same. It’s how we implement it that will be different.”