Novel Coronavirus - 19 pandemic impact on private health-care services with special focus on factors determining its utilization: Indian scenario

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, has rapidly escalated into a global pandemic which leads to declaration of national health emergency in several countries and is having a profound impact on private health-care systems globally including India in unprecedented manner. However, the impacts are very serious, especially on global economics and health care due to COVID-19 pandemic. During this pandemic, private hospitals and clinics are experiencing a reduction of in patient footfalls due to nationwide lockdown and several other factors as well which are leading to inadequate utilization of health-care services by the patients and decrease in medical services volumes which resulted in acute economic crisis. In this article, various factors that caused a significant reduction in utilization rates of private health-care systems such as hospitals and clinics were outlined and discussed.