What Have We Learned From COVID-19 Pandemic? Insights for Strengthening the Indian Healthcare System From Challenges Faced During COVID-19 Pandemic

During the pandemic, healthcare systems were overloaded with COVID-19 patients and were dealing with a highly uncertain situation regarding patients’ arrival, treatment and recovery. To understand the challenges faced by the healthcare system during the pandemic, inductive thematic analysis of news articles published by the Gujarat edition of Indian English newspapers and news portals describing issues faced in delivering healthcare services in Gujarat was carried out. The results highlight an urgent need to focus on reforms to eliminate healthcare facilities and workers shortage, catastrophic out-of-pocket payments by households, and over-prescription of medicines and medical procedures. There is also a need to focus on ensuring compliance by hospitals with fire safety guidelines and the timely settlement of financial claims for strategic purchasing of healthcare services by the government.