Market Threats to Charity in Medicine

Abstract

From the early 1990s, ’five-star’ hospitals have sprouted up in small towns and cities across Kerala. Equipped with expensive diagnostic technologies and super-specialist consultants, these institutions are now the leading players in the booming local health care industry, setting norms and values across the entire health care system. This paper examines the business strategies and daily practices of health care institutions to understand the ways in which different hospitals compete to attract patients. Earlier approaches to corruption in medicine emphasise the over-use and mis-use of technology and the ’unethical practices of doctors’ (Yesudian 1994), characteristic of a more informal health care market. In Kerala, marketisation has produced a competitive health care market, whereby the use of technology has become central to the organisation, ethos and practice of ‘for profit’ institutions. Across the health care industry technologies, referrals and kickbacks are an integral part of a highly commercialised formal health care market. The paper illustrates how with growing corporate interests in medicine how it is increasingly difficult for hospitals and doctors to eschew the rules set by the market place. Taking an example of a charitable institution with a rich moral framework, the paper illustrates how technology, competition and business strategies are threatening the survival of ’non-profit’ orientations in medicine. Marketisation has thus transformed previously ‘illegitimate’ practices into the daily practices of an increasingly formalised industry.

Speaker

Caroline Wilson (Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex)

Organisers

Department of Social Sciences, French Institute of Pondicherry

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry - 605 001

Time

16h30

See also : Societies and Medicines in South Asia programme page.