YJ: We are together this afternoon to discuss an issue that both of us are very interested in, which is the quality of health care services especially in public health services. We are limiting our discussion to the Indian scenario. So, if you permit, may I start shooting off questions that I would want you to answer as well as you know.
TS: Yes, we should focus on the problems and challenges that public providers and health care managers encounter when they work at improving quality of care as well as some of the policy challenges in this area.
YJ: Let me start with a very generic question. When we talk about quality of healthcare, what is it that you think of?
TS: In a broader sense, quality refers to specific attributes of a process that ensures that user-needs are met. In the context of health policy, we understand universal access to healthcare services as universal access to quality health services. In other words, the right to health care is a right to quality healthcare. In this context the specific attributes would be: