Reducing costs Britain's National Health Service (NHS) offers mostly free medical care to all patients, irrespective of the income they earn Monitor, Britain's health service economic regulator, estimates a £30-billion spending gap by 2021 Monitor chief executive has praised the Indian model as the most interesting of global health systems According to him, the Indian model can bring a huge step forward in improving productivity of the NHS

Indian treatment methods could hold the key to the survival of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) that still offers mostly free medical care to all patients, irrespective of the income they earn.

India’s use of production-line methods to conduct an estimated 3 lakh cataract operations every year has been cited as a way of saving massive UK surgery costs that will otherwise contribute to a looming cash crisis.

Britain’s health service economic regulator, Monitor, estimates a £30-billion spending gap by 2021 unless radical efficiency savings are implemented.

Monitor chief executive David Bennett praised the Indian model as the most interesting of global health systems, saying it could bring a “huge step forward” in improving the productivity of the NHS.

British medical professionals say during cataract operations in India, simpler tasks are given to cheaper staff with qualified surgeons carrying out only the most complex part of the procedure.

“This is not poor quality care, this is genuinely a different way of doing it,” Bennett said. “They have redesigned the whole process so the surgeon is basically doing nothing, but operating on the patients. I think a lot of creativity and imagination is needed to work out how you take those sorts of ideas and bring them into this country,” he said.

“Over the next eight years, the health sector will face its greatest financial challenge in recent times. We are all going to have to strain every sinew to meet it. While there are individual things the sector can do - like be more efficient in its procurement or introducing new ways of working in hospitals - what is required is a step-change. In short, the NHS must undergo radical change if it is to survive,” he added.

“Monitor, as the health sector regulator, will not only be supporting, but actively enabling changes that deliver better services to patients and reduce costs.”

This is the second time in recent months that India’s health treatment methods have been cited as a way of cutting medical costs in the UK. Last August, former UK Health Minister Patricia Hewitt cited cheaper Indian clinical procedures, including heart operations, where costs were significantly lower than in Britain.

Heart bypass surgery in India, for example, is a comparatively modest £1,000 compared to £35,000 in the UK. Hewitt also anticipated many NHS trusts signing business agreements with Indian health care providers.