Private hospitals in India are least monitored by the government, which leads to violation of the roles and responsibility they have to offer for the community. Indeed, it is a more serious issue in a country like India where people are forced below poverty line (BPL) after every hospitalization. Of the four different models of health expenditure, India and, in fact, many developing countries follow the out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure model rampantly. This is very evident from the recent working article (2015) published by NITI Aayog-Health Division, which reveals that OOP expenditures are high in India accounting for 69.5 per cent of total health expenditure. These are catastrophic economic damages for the poor and push an estimated 37 million into poverty each year. Furthermore, 66.4 per cent of the total expenditure is on medicines. A major part of these expenditures are invariably the money spent by a huge section of the community, both rich–poor and rural–urban, on healthcare services availed from the privately run corporate hospitals in India. The sector needs to be sensitive for an inclusive healthcare. However, the situation appears to be the opposite in India and the private health sector creates a divide in the society by virtue of which the rich get medical care and the poor stay sick or die. This article discusses various ethical concerns and remedial measures relating to the functionality of private hospitals which poses serious pressure on the community and marginalized sections of the society.

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The study captures hospital service quality expectations during the COVID-19 crisis and compares the same before the onset of COVID-19. The study also highlights which dimensions of service quality attenuate during a medical crisis. The authors used a service quality measurement instrument based on SERVQUAL to capture service quality expectation from patients between June 2019 and May 2020. A sample of 700 was obtained (pre COVID-19 sample size 350 and during COVID-19 sample size 350). The data was analysed using partial least squares, structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and ANOVA. Service quality and its dimensions of assurance, empathy, reliability, responsiveness and tangibility remain relevant during COVID-19 pandemic, however, there is a drop in service quality expectation in India in all the five dimensions of service quality. Service quality expectations in tangibility dropped by 11.59%, reliability dropped by 8.82%, responsiveness dropped by 11.56%, assurance dropped by 9.82% and empathy dropped by 12.29%. From a practical standpoint, the study also identifies service quality dimensions that hospitals need to focus on during a crisis. In India, hospitals handling COVID-19 patients need to pay special heed to reliability and responsiveness to improve their service quality and better manage care during the pandemic situation.