Introduction

The primary health care system in India has evolved since independence and there is an elaborate network of nearly 200,000 Government Primary Health Care Facilities (GPHCFs), both in rural and urban areas (Box 1) [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]. The existing GPHCFs deliver a narrow range of services, due to variety of reasons including, at times, the non-availability of providers as well. Thus, the GPHCFs in India are grossly underutilized & excluding for the mother and child health services, in 2013-14, only 11.5% of rural and 3.9% in urban people in need of health services used this vast network [1, 2]. People in India either choose higher level of government facilities for primary health care (PHC) needs (which results in an issue of subsidiarity) or attend a private provider (which results in the out of pocket expenditure or OOPE), both situations are not good for a well-functioning health system. The challenge of weak PHC in India are increasingly being recognized and acknowledged. The National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 of India proposed to strengthen PHC systems, invest two-third or more government health spending on PHC, with an increase in overall government funding for health to 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2025, against 1.18% in 2015–16 [3]. Following on the NHP 2017, the Government in India announced Ayushman Bharat Program (ABP) in February 2018 with two components of (a) Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) to strengthen & deliver comprehensive Primary Health Care (cPHC) services for entire population and (b) Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) for secondary and tertiary level hospitalization services for bottom 40% of families in India [4]. The details of ABP in the context of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has been published earlier [1] and a schematic of ABP is provided as Fig. 1. These two arms, hence onwards, in this article, have also been referred as AB-HWCs and AB-PMJAY, to indicate that both are component of ABP.

Box 1 Evolution of Government PHC system in India [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]
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Fig. 1
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Ayushman Bharat Program in India: a schematic

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This review article describes the concepts, provides an update on implementation of two components of ABP; documents & critically analyzes initiatives under AB-HWC in context of delivery of comprehensive PHC (cPHC) service & proposes a few ways-forward. Early reflections on how challenges posed by and initial learnings from the response to Corona virus (SARS-CoV-2) disease or COVID-19 pandemic could be used for scale-up of HWCs in India, have also been summarized.

Health & Wellness Centres (HWCs) and Comprehensive Primary Health Care in India

The first HWCs was launched in Jangla village in Bhairamgarh tehsil of Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh state in India on 14 April 2018 [1, 4]. The key events related to HWCs in India are summarized in Table 1. As part of HWC components of ABP, the govt of India announced to make existing 150,000 GPHCFs in country functional by December 2022. AB-HWCs are not new facilities and are being set up as an upgraded version of existing GPHCFs such as Health Sub-Centers (HSC); Primary Health Centers and Urban Primary Health Centers (UPHCs). The proposed increase in provision of services (shift from erstwhile provision of 6 sub-group of services to 12 sub-group of services) and upgrade on other key design aspects are shown in Figs. 2 and 3 [1, 31].

Table 1 Evolution of Health & Wellness Centres (HWCs) in India [1, 3, 4, 30]
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Fig. 2
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Key components and design aspects of AB-HWCs [1, 31]

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Fig. 3
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Service provision through AB-HWCs [1, 31]

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Against the target of 15,000 of HWC in year 1, a total of 17,149 AB-HWCs were made functional by 31 March 2019 [30]. Cumulative target of 40,000 HWCs was set up for 31 March 2020. There was slow-down in setting up HWCs in March 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic and total of 38,595 HWCs were operational by 31 March 2020. The cumulative target is 70,000 HWCs by 31 March 2021, then 110,000 by 31 March 2022 and 150,000 by 31 December 2022. Alongside, all UPHC across India were to be converted to HWCs by March 2020 [1]. Official data on utilization of services from HWCs was available till 22 Sept 2019, when nearly 21,000 AB-HWCs were operational which had reported a foot-fall of 17 million. In these Centres 950,000 yoga sessions were conducted; 7 million people received treatment for hypertension and 3.1 million for diabetes mellitus, Sixteen million beneficiaries received essential medicines and 4.9 million received free essential diagnostics [1, 32]. The second component of AB-PMJAY was launched on 23 Sept 2018 and progress on this component is summarised in Box 2 [32, 33].

Box 2 Progress under Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) component of Ayushman Bharat in India [1, 32, 33]
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The HWCs aims to address the identified challenges in PHC systems in India, by focusing upon holistic PHC strengthening through various initiatives [Table 2 (structured as per health system functions)]. This is not first such initiative to strengthen PHC services in India. Yet, why AB-HWCs appears more promising than all earlier initiatives to strengthen and deliver comprehensive PHC has been explained in Appendix 1 [1, 3, 27,28,29, 31,32,33,34,35,36,37]. This is relevant considering much of 14 y since the launch of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in the year 2005, had also focused on strengthening PHC system in the country.

Table 2 Challenges in PHC system, provisions through AB-HWCs and complementarity with NHM in India [1, 3, 27, 28, 31]
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Making Health & Wellness Centres of India Work

HWCs aim to build upon what has been started under NRHM/ National Health Mission (NHM). However, considering even in the past, the similar attempt to strengthen PHC services have met partial success, more is needed to ensure that AB-HWCs does better than the initiatives in the past. Therefore, it will be important that learnings from past are used and challenges identified, and focused attention is given to effective scale up. A few approaches could be as follows:

First, give sufficient attention, visibility and priority to AB-HWCs as vehicle to strengthen primary health care services. Of the two components in ABP, the HWCs seem to be getting comparatively less attention, in spite of being recognized that cPHC can take care of up to 80% of health needs [30, 38, 39]. AB-HWCs is also a more difficult component to implement than insurance-based AB-PMJAY. Getting less public and political attention may appear a minor issue but may result in lower prioritization. There is a need to bring attention back on AB-HWCs and make these politically visible through advocacy and evidence. There is role for technical experts, professional associations and civil society representatives in ensuring that cPHC is not lost in the noise for more secondary and tertiary care services. People also need to demand for better primary healthcare services from their elective representatives.

Second, develop a detailed ‘primary health care investment plan’ for India and Indian states. The policy announcements are often equated with political will. The real test of the ‘political will’ is whether policy announcements have been followed by commensurate, sufficient & sustained financial allocation. In 2015–16, around 45% of total government spending on health was allocated to PHC services [40]. Though National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 has proposed to increase government funding for PHC and health services, the reality is that government funding for health in India has increased only marginally in last two decades. Similarly, the state government spending on health, proposed to be increased to 8% of state budget has remained at 5% of state budget since 2001–02 and increased very marginally [41]. There is a need for more and active public attention and prioritization to increase govt funding for health in India and Indian states. The initial allocation to AB-HWCs in union budget while may be sufficient in the beginning; however, with each passing year the recurrent expenditure for each HWC would be needed. This requires a detailed ‘primary healthcare investment plan’, preceded by, a detailed cost analysis for PHC services in India. In addition, there is a need for capital expenditure for setting up additional GPHCFs to address the shortage of facilities and meeting the health care needs of growing population, especially in urban areas [42].

Third, the service availability through AB-HWCs need to be continuously upgraded and made locally adapted to meet 80% or more health needs. In most of the HWCs set up till now, one additional package of services [the seventh package of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)] has been included. However, 5 more packages need to be added and assured. In efforts to achieve the number-based targets for AB-HWCs, for every financial year, focus should not be lost from already established HWCs. The provision of services through these facilities, the utilization by public, assured availability of providers and functioning as per guidelines need to be ensured through continuous oversight, monitoring and innovations. Another approach could be that all the eligible GPHCFs in single geographical area, a block or tehsil, need to be made functional simultaneously to increase utilization and change the perception about government facilities.

Fourth, focus on demand generation for health services through mechanisms such as community participation and social accountability. Getting the facilities functional or strengthening supply side through HWCs (or other similar state specific initiatives) is important; however, it is unlikely to generate utilization; specifically when the previous encounter of people with these facilities has not been pleasant. Simply an upgrade of government health facility might not be enough. People need to come to the health system and experience the change, which will contribute to further demand genration. The supply side strengthening through PHC needs to be augmented by demand generation. This can be achieved with increased and active community involvement; accountability and involving local body representatives and civil society organizations in the process, from the very early stage. In backdrop of recent policy dialogues and approaches adopted for Swachh Bharat Mission (clean Indian mission) and the approach to behavioral economics of nudge need to be examined for suitable adoption in health sector [43,44,45].

Fifth, the entire process should be guided by use of evidence to scale up interventions and services. A recently published study reported a few common characteristics of better functioning government facilities in India, which included (a) an assured package health services with ‘limited intention to availability gap’; (b) Appropriate mix & sufficient availability of providers; (c) continuum of care with functional referral linkages; (d) initiatives to achieve quality standard; & (e) community engagement [46]. There is similar evidence from countries such as Brazil; Ghana and South Africa [47,48,49]. Mohalla Clinics of Delhi and Basthi Dawakhana of Telangana, are empirical evidence that people start attending the government facilities if the facilities are made functional and the services are available in an assured manner, people prefer PHC over complicated and overpowering large hospitals. These initiatives have become popular amongst people and brought poor, marginalized, women and children to government health care system [50,51,52].

Sixth, ‘continuum of care’ through coordination between two arms of ABP will contribute to effective utilization. Establishing a functioning referral linkage between HWCs/PHCs and from secondary and tertiary care services including AB-PMJAY should be focus for policy design and implementation. A good coordination between AB-PMJAY and AB-HWCs is not only imperative for streamlining access to care but will be pivotal in providing timely and quality care to the target beneficiaries. A few indicative approaches for ‘continuity of care’ could be: one, common process for registration of patients at AB-HWCs as well as for AB-PMJAY, through common health identifier with community linkage and registration; two, awareness generation for beneficiaries at grassroot level. Three, the training curriculum of Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) and other field workers should include a module on AB-HWCs and services and provisions under AB-PMJAY. For a forward referral, AB-HWC can become source of information for AB-PMJAY beneficiaries; fourth, develop effective and two-way referral and inclusion of some outpatient components in AB-PMJAY benefit package and fifth, AB-PMJAY and AB-HWCs to analyse disease and population health risks and trends. The service delivery approach should be beyond referral and the PHC systems need to facilitate the care seeking by proactively seeking appointments for patient going to next level of facilities. Once the treatment plan is prepared at next level of facility, the referral back to PHC level should also be ensured for continuity of treatment and required follow up. This could prove extremely essential and important in context of NCD (including diabetes, hypertension) services.

Seventh, AB-HWCs also need to have dedicated focus on population-based and public health services. It is not a PHC service, if focus is on curative services at facility level only. A well-functioning PHC system needs to cater to those who are not attending the health facilities. People in communities with undiagnosed health conditions need to be identified and brought to treatment, is also part of PHC services. Establishing All India Public Health management Cadre could be one complementary step [3, 53].

A few more suggestions on how to make AB-HWCs more effective and better functional are provided in articles published earlier [1, 30, 45, 46].

Discussion

AB-HWC could, arguably, be termed as the second wave of PHC reforms in India after NRHM in 2005. There is a higher likelihood of success of this initiative than all the earlier initiative, due to many factors. The most important being that AB-HWCs start on an advantage of already strengthened and existing PHC system through NHM between 2005 and 2018. The other factors being the ongoing attention on advancing UHC; states showing increasing and more than ever interest in improving PHC services through their own mechanism and increasing civil society participation and engagement in health [45].

The AB-HWCs could be considered a national initiative to harmonize PHC service delivery on a common platform for all states. This is a major approach in federal system, where health is a state subject as per constitution of India. In the recent years, a number of Indian states have started initiatives to strengthen PHC services, which should provide learnings for AB-HWC and potential harmonization between state initiatives and HWCs (Box 3) [50,51,52, 54,55,56,57,58]. Clearly, for success, the Indian states have to take leadership in designing their own additional initiatives. Even when implementing AB-HWCs, innovative context specific approaches and adaptations for local setting would be needed.

Box 3 PHC strengthening initiatives by Indian states since 2015 [50,51,52, 54,55,56,57,58]
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As part of accountability and governance, the union government initiative such as ranking of states on health, and the proposed ranking of district hospitals should be further expanded to rank the states/districts on their performance on PHC [59, 60]. As a next step, responsibility for such ranking can be assigned to an independent & non-governmental organization. The annual report on state of primary health care in India can be started, on the line of Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER) in India [61]. These could be built upon NITI Aayog’s state health index and proposed district hospital ranking [59, 60].

As India plans to strengthen cPHC, the learnings and initiatives from NRHM/NHM can facilitate the strengthening of AB-HWCs (and the harmonized and integrated NHM and ABP convergence) can help India to make rapid progress towards UHC as analyzed in Table 2. The ongoing attention on health by various approaches should be optimally used to place health higher on development agenda. These opportunities includes the reforms in medical education through the NMC Act, 2019 [34]; dialogue and discourse on the Right to Health [62] which has become stronger following three Indian states considering enactment of a legislation; the recommendation from health subcommittee of 15th Finance commission [62, 63] and the renewed global focus on UHC and PHC, as reflected in Astana 2018 and United Nations High Level Meeting (UNHLM) on UHC in Sept 2019 [17, 18].

This brings in an important question of when can AB-HWC be considered a success in India? To answer this question, the performance of PHC system in India needs to be measured based upon health system outcomes. There would be a need of explicit attention, engagement and linkage to deliver interventions to tackle Social Determinants of Health (SDH) through PHC system. World over, including in India, while inputs to health systems are measured regualrly, the goals on improved health (outcomes  and equity), responsiveness, efficiency, and financial protection are not monitored sufficiently. It is expected that this challenge would partially be resolved through initiative of the global UHC monitoring reports. The progress and success of AB-HWCs should also need to be measured against some of the objectives of health systems and functions (Fig. 4). AB-HWCs will be credited with the real and lasting fixing of the primary health care system in India, if people start using services at the upgraded facilities, for broad range of health needs. A few more approaches and ideas for effective roll-out of AB-HWCs are provided in Appendix 2 [34, 35, 62, 64,65,66,67,68].

Fig. 4
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AB-HWCs and potential to impact various components of health systems

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In early 2020, novel Corona virus (SARS-CoV2) disease or COVID-19 pandemic hit the world [69]. Across the countries, hundreds of thousand people got affected and many thousands died due to the disease [70]. Experience from countries, affected at the start of pandemic indicated that the asymptomatic patients visiting hospitals for non-COVID-19 health reasons partly contributed in spread of infections to many other people- attending the same facility- for some other health condition. Learning from these experiences, in India, from the start of cases being reported, except for the large hospitals, most of the private facilities were either partially functioning or out patient departments were completely closed, at least for short period of time. There were reports of gross shortage of even essential health services for non-COVID-19 patients, which were mostly provided through government primary health care facilities and smaller clinics. COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the relevance of stronger primary health care and is a proof that the world needs better health systems than it has. The weak health systems and primary health care facilities are in those countries, where the burden of diseases are already high and the epidemics and pandemic can further devastate those settings, as had been experienced during the Ebola epidemic in three African countries around 2014 [71, 72].

In late March 2020, COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the government of India to release the guidelines to legalize prescription through telephonic consultation [73]. The home delivery of medicines were allowed during COVID-19 pandemic [74]. These initiatives may be continued through AB-HWCs and have potential to change the PHC service delivery in the years ahead. COVID-19 has indicated that ensuring healthier population in the time ahead would need approaches such as mass education on hand washing, cough etiquettes, personal hygiene and physical distancing. The mental health issues are a major health challenge in India. However, there are not enough mental health services in the country [75]. COVID-19 is expected to exacerbate the psychosocial and mental health issues and the provision of such services should be prioritized through AB-HWCs. COVID-19 challenge should be used as an opportunity to deliver broader public health messages and services and PHC system is expected to be the most appropriate as well as the cost-effective approach. Alongside, while designing health services, the specific focus needs to be retained on how to make primary health care, in specific, and the health systems, in general, ready and resilient for epidemics, pandemics and natural calamities, which keep affecting, one or other part of the country (and the world), on regular intervals.

Conclusions

There is a global consensus that universal health coverage can only be achieved on the foundation of stronger primary health care system. There is a renewed attention on strengthening and delivering comprehensive primary health care services in India through health and wellness centres. While the AB-HWCs aims to address the existing challenges in PHC system, the effectiveness and success will be dependent upon a rapid transition from policy to implementation stage; focus on both supply and demand side interventions, engagement of community and civil society and other stakeholders, focus on effective and functional referral linkages; ongoing learnings, innovations and mid-course corrections, effective linkage and coordination between two components of Ayushman Bharat program, additional & complementary initiatives by Indian states, sustained political will & monitoring and evaluation of the process, amongst other. COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the need for strengthening the primary health care at the earliest. The experience from India can have lessons and learnings for other low and middle-income countries to strengthen primary health care in journey towards universal health coverage.