A study on corporate social responsibility for the health care of the elderly by private health care providers of Mangalore city: A health systems research

Introduction: Private sector is the largest provider of health care services in India. But it is expensive. Self-driven corporate social responsibility (CSR) providing free or subsidised services will be useful to the elderly. There are no published data reporting the pattern or types of health care services provided to elderly by the private health care sector of India through CSR initiative. So this study was undertaken. Objectives: To know the pattern (Subsidised/free) and type (Medical, Surgical etc.,) of Health care services received by the elderly people as a part of CSR. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire based cross-sectional study conducted among all private health care providers of Mangalore city. List of all private health care providers which included various types of hospitals (corporate hospitals, multispecialty hospitals etc...) were obtained from the local chapter of Indian Medical Association. The data was collected form hospitals fulfilling the study criteria. The data was analysed using SPSS software for windows, version 16.0. Results are presented as frequencies and proportions in appropriate tables. Results: Totally 24 hospitals had participated in this study. Most (n = 16, 66.7%) reported providing some free or subsidised services. Among them only 7 (29.2%) were providing free services like: Health check-up camps, subsidised medical and surgical treatment. However most of them did not respond to the “criteria for selecting of the elderly for such free services.” Conclusion: Most of the private hospitals in Mangalore do not provide free or subsidised health care services to the elderly through a self-driven CSR initiative.