Trust and the regulation of health systems: Insights from India

Abstract

It has been argued that the health system in India appears to be systematically falling short in achieving equitable improvements in health status, quality of care, and social and financial risk protection. The poor performance of the health system is to a large extent due to the failure of the state regulators and of the professional associations to uphold their mandates, which in turn appears to be related to a broader and more fundamental failure of ‘trust’ in the expert systems that deliver health care and in institutions that are mandated to oversee this ‘entrustment’. This chapter attempts to identify the sources of this erosion of trust by analysing the regulatory and stewardship arra..