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Ask yourself this: When was the last time you chose a hospital based on how many patients actually recovered there? You probably can’t answer that. Because no one tracks it. No one shares it. And honestly, no one seems to care.
We judge airlines by whether they get us to our destination safely. We judge restaurants by whether the food tastes good. But healthcare? We judge it by how fancy the lobby looks and how many degrees are on the wall.
Here’s what’s broken: In health care, we pay for inputs, not outcomes.
Think about it. A hospital charges more for having imported equipment. A doctor charges more for training abroad. But do their patients actually get better faster? Nobody knows. Nobody measures. Nobody asks.
The Supreme Court recently pushed for fair pricing in private healthcare. BIS is working on standardisation. Good initiatives, but they’re still focused on the wrong thing—regulating what goes in, not what comes out. It’s like trying to improve restaurants by controlling the price of ingredients while ignoring whether anyone actually likes the food.
Everyone’s excited about AI in health care. And yes, AI can detect diseases earlier, optimise hospital operations, reduce paperwork. All useful stuff. But we’re asking AI the wrong questions.
Instead of using AI to make appointments faster, what if we used it to answer: Which doctor actually helps diabetic patients reduce their medication over time? Instead of using AI to predict diseases, what if we used it to track: What percentage of knee surgery patients at this hospital return to normal activity?
This isn’t futuristic thinking. It’s just pointing our technology at what actually matters.
Most health care tech fails in India because it’s built for a different world. A world where patients show up for follow-ups. Where prescriptions get filled. Where medical records exist in one language.
You want AI that works in India? It needs to understand:
- A follow-up only happens after three WhatsApp reminders
- Chest pain gets described in 22 languages and 50 different ways
- Patients visit multiple doctors before trusting one
- Recovery happens at home, not in hospitals
This isn’t about dumbing down technology. It’s about building for how health care actually works here.
Let’s be honest about why we don’t track outcomes: It’s hard, and many people benefit from keeping things opaque. ABDM and ABHA are creating digital health IDs. Great start. But a health ID without health outcomes is like a passport without knowing which flights actually land.
What we need:
- Systems that track if you could walk six months after surgery, not just that you had surgery
- Data on whether your diabetes actually improved, not just that you got prescribed medicine
- Metrics on which treatments work for which conditions, not just which treatments were done
Simple? Yes. Easy? No.
Because it requires three uncomfortable changes:
- Providers accepting that their outcomes will be visible
- Patients demanding outcome data, not just credentials
- Insurers paying for results, not procedures
The solution isn’t complicated. But it requires choosing to measure what matters.
Health care providers: Stop using systems that just generate bills. Start tracking patient recovery.
Insurance companies: Structure reimbursements based on outcomes, not just procedures performed.
AI developers: Stop making the broken system more efficient. Start building tools that measure if patients actually get better.
The questions we should be asking:
- Why do C-sections at Hospital A have twice the complications of Hospital B?
- Which doctors actually help patients reduce long-term medication?
- What percentage of back pain patients avoid surgery with physiotherapy?
These aren’t technology problems. They’re choice problems.
Imagine walking into a clinic knowing the probability of recovery based on thousands of similar cases. Not just the doctor’s resume. Imagine insurance that costs less when you choose providers with better outcomes. Not just fancier facilities.
Imagine doctors being recognized for healing rates. Not just degrees.
Countries like Sweden and the UK have moved toward this model. But India needs its own approach—one that works with our fragmented, multilingual, multi-speed reality.
At the end of the day, health care has one job: Did the patient get better?
Everything else—the infrastructure, the technology, the certificates—is just expensive decoration if it doesn’t lead to that outcome.
We have the technology. We can collect the data. We can build the algorithms.
What we need is the courage to measure what matters. And the wisdom to pay for what works, not just what was done.
Because right now, we’re running a system that rewards everything except the one thing patients actually care about: getting better.
That needs to change. And it starts by asking the right questions.
This article is authored by Abhinav Lal, co-founder, Practo.
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