India's hospital boom is improving access but pricing millions out of critical care

India's private healthcare industry has seen unprecedented growth in recent years On a recent visit to Miraj, a small town in western India where I grew up, I counted more than 50 multi-specialty hospitals, diagnostics centres and health clinics packed along a five kilometre stretch of road. Many of them had come up in just the past five years, even though the town has historically been a regional medical hub in the state of Maharashtra. The proliferation of these new facilities tells the story of the unprecedented boom in India's private healthcare industry over recent years. Hospitals have been undertaking breakneck expansion every quarter , diagnostics chains are expanding their footprint across smaller towns and medical institutes are raising hundreds of millions of dollars through the public markets to expand presence across the country. In early August, Manipal Health, India's largest multi-specialty hospital, raked in nearly a billion dollars in what became India's second largest initial public offering (IPO) this year. The sector has also been a darling of global private equity (PE) investors. Between 2022 and 2024, Indian healthcare and pharma companies recorded nearly 600 mergers and acquisitions and private equity transactions valued at more than $30bn. Forty per cent of these funds went to hospitals, according to data from Grant Thornton. An additional amount over $20bn was raised , as per more recent data obtained from the consultancy . Yet, even as the country's health infrastructure has seen a radical improvement in access as a result of this investment wave, millions of Indians have been priced out . Relatives of patients wait inside a government-run hospital in Kolkata This was borne out by a new report, external released by a government panel recently, which highlights the strikingly unequal nature of India's burgeoning healthcare economy, raising serious concerns about a "deepening affordability crisis" in the country's private hospitals. The report found that treatment in private hospitals is often between five and 10 times costlier than in government facilities, with the gap further widening for serious illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and kidney failure. It also said the "unbridled" growth of clinics, nursing homes and diagnostic centres and uneven implementation of regulatory standards had led to "glaring disparities in both the quality and cost of care in private sector, leaving patients vulnerable to arbitrary pricing and substandard practices". It further blamed "rampant commercialisation of private healthcare" for increased patient grievances when it came to things such as excessive billing, unnecessary diagnostics, and soaring costs for routine procedures like childbirth, which it said was "directly pushing vulnerable households into catastrophic debt and distress, causing asset sales".