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Indian Public Health Standards - I.P.H.S
Health care delivery in India has been envisaged at three levels namely primary, secondary and tertiary. The secondary level of health care essentially includes Community Health Centres(CHCs), constituting the First Referral Units(FRUs) and the district hospitals.
The CHCs were designed to provide referral health care for cases from the primary level and for cases in need of specialist care approaching the centre directly. 4 PHCs are included under each CHC thus catering to approximately 80,000 population in tribal / hilly areas and 1, 20,000 population in plain areas. CHC is a 30-bedded hospital providing specialist care in medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Surgery and Paediatrics. These centres are however fulfilling the tasks entrusted to them only to a limited extent. The la unch of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) gives us the opportunity to have a fresh look at their functioning. NRHM envisages bringing up the CHC services to the level of Indian Public Health Standards. Although there are already existing standards as prescribed by the Bureau of Indian Standards for 30-bedded hospital, these are at present not achievable as they are very resource-intensive. Under the NRHM, the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) is being envisaged in each village to promote the health activities. With ASHA in place, there is bound to be a groundswell of demands for health services and the system needs to be geared to face the challenge. Not only does the system require upgradation to handle higher patient load, but emphasis also needs to be given to quality aspects to increase the level of patient satisfaction. In order to ensure quality of services, the Indian Public Health Standards are being set up for CHCs so as to provide a yardstick to measure the services being provided there. This document provides the requirements for a Minimum Functional Grade of a Community Health Centre.