Background The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), a publicly funded health insurance scheme for the poor in India, was launched in 2018. Early experiences of states with various purchasing arrangements can provide valuable insights for its future performance. We sought to understand the institutional agencies and performance of the trust and insurance models of purchasing with respect to; a) Provider contracting b) Claim management c) Implementation costs. Methods A mixed methods case study design was adopted. Two states, Uttar Pradesh (representing a trust model) and Jharkhand (representing the insurance model) were purposively selected. Data sources included document reviews, key informant interviews, quantitative scheme data from the provider empanelment and claims database, and primary data on costs. Descriptive statistics were reported for quantitative data, content analysis was used for thematic reporting of qualitative data. Results In both models, the state was the final authority on empanelment decisions, with no significant influence of the insurance company. Private hospitals constituted the majority of empanelled providers, with wide variations in district-wise distribution of bed capacities in both states. The urgency of completing empanelment in the early days of the scheme created the need for both states to re-review hospitals and de-empanel those not meeting requirements. Very few quality- accredited private hospitals were empaneled. The trust displayed more oversight of support agencies for claim management, longer processing times, a higher claim rejection rate and numbers of queries raised, as compared to the insurance model. Support agencies in both states faced challenges in assessing the clinical decisions of hospitals. Cost-effectiveness showed mixed results; the trust cost less than the insurance model per beneficiary enrolled, but more per claim generated. Conclusions Efforts are required to enable a better distribution and ensure quality of care in empanelled hospitals. The adoption of standard treatment guidelines is needed to support hospitals and implementing agencies in better claim management. The oversight of agencies through enforcement of contracts remains vital in both models. Assessing the comparative performance of trusts and insurance companies in more states at later stages of scheme implementation, would be further useful to determine their cost-effectiveness as purchasers.

Although there has been a tremendous change in the way diseases are diagnosed and treated, the ways in which health care delivery has been managed has seen very little change. Several academic studies have arisen in the area of service design, but an amalgamation of this research, especially in the area of healthcare services is not available. The aim of this systematic review is to evaluate the published research on service design in healthcare and accordingly identify the gaps and scope of future research. After analyzing the articles and reviewing the Service design in healthcare literature, the following are our main contributions: (i) clarification of the service design concept and the developments that appears in the literature review of service design in the healthcare sector; (ii) classification of the service design tools and techniques that are most commonly used in the healthcare sector; (iii) demonstration of the service design as the preponderant construct that is used as a tool and technique to improve quality and efficiency in the healthcare service.The resultant systematic review reveals a change in the type of research carried out, the service design tools used and a shift towards service design from using the co-design tool to other methods. The paper highlights the gaps in the very limited amount of empirical work in the non-clinical healthcare space and accordingly a model is recommended.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way brands communicate to their potential and current customers. This paper uses a multimethod approach to specifically study nine corporate Indian chain hospital brands and their online social media presence during COVID-19. The authors sought to decipher the implicit information gained from Facebook pages and conducted a qualitative study with NVivo 12.3. to understand online branding activity over a year, which was for six months pre-COVID-19 and the first six months during COVID-19. This study corroborated these findings through qualitative interviews with six marketing managers from these brands and thus triangulated the findings. The objective of this paper is to understand these changes, and this will pave the way for the country's smaller hospitals that are yet to delve into Social Media Marketing.

The incidence and prevalence of non-communicable diseases are on the rise. Such diseases require prolonged treatment and it is of utmost importance to be compliant to treatment. Pharmaceutical companies are moving from traditional marketing to “beyond the pill” marketing to foster patient centricity. These companies also have a motive to conduct sustained sales of their products for the prolonged treatment tenures. For this reason, pharmaceutical companies have come up with support programs to promote treatment adherence. In India, support programs are also conducted by the Government, peer support groups, home healthcare and animal-assisted therapy. Detailed primary research and its analysis have been conducted to look at different parameters discussed in the study. A model for an ideal patient support program has been provided.