Challenges of Health Care Administrators in India: Reference from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh
Authors: Chouhan Neha , Kumar Siddhartha 
Published: October 2023

Background: Since the last few decades, India's healthcare system has been on a progressive path, contributing to the country's increasing economy. It is one of the most important sectors in terms of employment, money, and infrastructure. With such quick expansion and progress, issues are bound in all parts of healthcare that are overseen by hospital managers. This study was conducted with the goal of determining the actual factor (independent/dependent) that influences the administrator's decision-making. This study assists in assessing the obstacles experienced by healthcare administrators in managing and operating hospitals on a daily basis, which will aid in determining strategies to overcome the challenges.

Materials and Methods A survey of 142 hospital administrators and managers from 48 different healthcare facilities (references from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh) was conducted. A systematic questionnaire was used to collect data in MS Excel. To determine the determinants influencing administrators for the quality of healthcare services offered by Indian healthcare organizations, exploratory in-depth individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 142 healthcare stakeholders, including healthcare providers, managers, policymakers, and payers. A Google-form questionnaire and a phone call were used to make contact.

Results: The bulk of the subjects had more than ten years of hospital administration experience, and 69% held a Masters in hospital administration degree, with the remaining holding other management degrees.87% of respondents believe that managing change (e.g., procedure, method, compliance with standards for staff/team members) is one of the most difficult issues for administrators in any firm. 88% of respondents identified increased patient load, increased internet usage, patients' ability to influence their own health, and enhanced awareness as obstacles. 85.7% agreed that greater population health knowledge and expectations, as well as improved patient safety and quality implementation - NABH, JCI, etc. of the hospital, can be problematic. Providing quality treatment at the right time, in the right place, with adequate resources was also seen as a critical difficulty for administrators. The Chi square test (Chi square value 0.197646, p value-.00001) revealed that the observed distribution differed from the expected distribution. It is possible to conclude that there is a relationship between the category variables. Significant link between legislative and regulatory organizations with regard to licensing, renewals, and periodic audits with years of expertise of hospital administrators. Ordinal regression (stat: 0.602985) and R square (stat: 0.363591) indicate that more independent variables with a substantial association with dependent variables should be sought. There was no other significant relationship discovered.  Spearman correlation (rs = 0.66262, p (2-tailed) = 0.03681) interprets a linear correlation between independent (categorical/ordinal variables) and dependent (continuous variables) witnesses a perfect correlation of rank, thus implying a direct relationship between the variables.

Conclusion: This study shows that all hospital administrators working in various healthcare settings encounter considerable obstacles on a daily basis. As a result, it may have a direct impact on patient care quality and hospital economy. It must be addressed with particular solutions such as smarter financial standards, cost-effective ways, and the promotion of tech-enabled programmes in order to improve the patient community's access to quality health care. This study discovers and limits the field of future research by identifying additional variables that may have a substantial correlation between continuous and categorical variables that may better explain the issues.