The ratio of doctors and nurses in India is terribly disproportionate which results in people going to untrained Rural Medical Practitioners (RMPs), hospitals being filled with nurses that do not match the necessary standards, and many vacancies of doctors and nurses at hospitals in all states. With years of underinvestment, non-positioning of workers, inadequate management, poor medical facilities, and rent-seeking behavior, the public health system is broken. With 70% of the population in our rural areas having low coverage, there is a skewed distribution of medical workers as well. The shortage of MBBS doctors and trained nurses are clearly visible in both the rural and urban sectors, which not only weakens its healthcare system but also hinders the technological growth waving in the present healthcare system. 

A substantial proportion is spent on curative care within India’s health budget, while staff wages form the bulk of public health expenditure. If wages are used inefficiently due to low employee motivation and efficiency, this may mean that a significant proportion of the total health expenditure is wasted. Although there has been a rise in the number of health facilities in rural India, several studies point to a major source of waste of money in the health sector, namely an excess of medical providers and practitioners. The relationship between health spending and positive health outcomes is greatly undermined by this. We need to increase the number of MBBS doctors and trained nurses for the system, particularly in PHCs and CHCs.In the “high focus states,” the shortage in qualified nurses varies from 65 percent to 95 percent. These states still do not, incidentally, have a sufficient number of nursing training schools. In addition, we are losing graduates to the private sector from public medical schools. The number of seats can be increased without much expansion of the current facilities. Public system students should say whether, at the time of entering, they will be opting for service in the public system for 15 years. The fees should be zero, in that case, otherwise, they should be equivalent to the private system average, which is Rs 50 lakh per student. They should be given two years of study leave at government expense to do specialization over the 15 years they work in the public system.

There are no standardized credentials for many rural medical practitioners, who provide 80 percent of outpatient care. For many people who rely on their practitioners to provide secure and reliable treatment, this is a disturbing statistic. The lack of large-scale training measures to resolve capacity deficiencies and workforce shortages for nurses, physicians, paramedics, and support staff has also seriously undermined India’s rural health system’s ability to provide rural communities with timely and efficient treatment.

The standard of health services in rural India matters because it represents the degree to which both human resources and individual wellbeing can be increased by investments in national health care systems. Good returns on such investments are provided by effective and accountable health care systems. In addition, in the long run, the quality of health care is more critical than increasing health care spending in order to enhance health outcomes.