Page 188 - ES 2020-21_Volume-1-2 [28-01-21]

Healthcare takes centre stage, finally! 171

Figure 21: Conditional Correlation of Residuals after
controlling for insurer fixed effects and year fixed effects

5.34 Table 2 shows the conditional Pearson correlations after controlling for insurer and year
fixed effects. The evidence highlights clearly the presence of asymmetric information in the
Indian private health insurance market.

TeleMeDICINe

5.35 Impressive growth has been seen in the adoption of telemedicine in India since the outbreak
of the COvID-19 pandemic. This coincided with the imposition of lockdown in India and the
issuance of the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines 2020 by the Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare (MoHFW) on March 25, 2020. eSanjeevani OPD (a patient-to-doctor tele-consultation
system) has recorded almost a million consultations since its launch in April 2020, as seen in
Figure 22. Similar growth was also reported by Practo, which mentioned a 500 per cent increase
in online consultations (varying from 200 to 700 per cent across different specialties) in just
three months.