Primary Health Centres in Urban India: Selection and Satisfaction (2012)
Undergraduate: Siddarth Nagaraj
Faculty Advisor: Sara Smith
Department: International & Area Studies
My research explored the motivating factors that lead individuals in the city of Bangalore, India to seek medical services in publicly funded Primary Health Centres (PHCs) as opposed to small, privately owned primary care clinics that are administered by a single physician. Primary Health Centres are single-physician clinics under the purview of the Indian government which provides the public with free medical care.
Created partly to make healthcare accessible to those who cannot afford to pay for medical treatment, PHCs (which suffer from understaffing, supply shortages and misuse of resources) are largely used by individuals who report low income and uninsured status in prior literature, suggesting that those who are least able to access medical care at all are most likely to be dependent upon a highly flawed public health system. In contrast, the vast majority of Indians do not attend PHCs and when polled, express negative opinions about such state-operated medical institutions. I was sought to learn what incentivizes patients to attend either a PHC or a private clinic. I concluded that apart from issues of cost, accessibility and awareness, patients in both sectors were led to attend a particular clinic by confidence in a single physician and the presence of a strong doctor-patient relationship.
My research involved seven weeks' travel to Bangalore, India, a period during which I visited three PHCs and three private clinics and interviewed 152 patients and 7 physicians