Now it is time to arrange some space that will work as the village health center where people can come and seek basic healthcare services. The health center needs to have clean place with basic furnishing and lot of posters depicting information about health and hygiene. The health literature collected from the government health centers can be displayed here.
A medicine kit should be kept available all the time. Usually, the kit should contain first aid box and basic medicines for wounds, bacterial infections, sickness, allergy and other preventive diseases like anemia, diarrhea etc. Refer to Where there is no doctor for more information.
Once the center is ready with all the basic requirements, it is necessary to plan out the services and the costs involved. Your organization may have made an investment so far, but there should be no hurry to recover it. It is very important to go very slow in this.
Community health service can be offered at small cost and this cost is mostly determined by the income-levels of the community. The information about income-levels of different households collected during community interaction will come handy.
Categorize the income-levels into three types:
|
Lowest Income-level |
Middle Income-level |
Higher Income-level |
For each of these levels, fix a fee for taking healthcare services at the village health center. There will be three health packages and each package will be available for different households based on their income-level. Although the fee will depend what kind of healthcare service will be rendered, it is necessary to categorize each of this service into three packages. For example, the cost of medicine for headache will have three prices: one for the lowest income category, the other for middle income category and the third for the higher income category.
You cannot earn a profit from lowest income-level category since it will be mostly subsidized. The middle income category receive the service at a slightly higher cost and the higher income-level category at the highest cost.
As only basic primary healthcare services can be offered through the health center, more complicated health problems need to be referred. As the local doctor will also be available once a week, patients with serious health problems can be referred to him or her. They can also be referred to government healthcare centers or public hospitals in other places.
Small earnings can begin to be accumulated through the fees charged to different patients for the services rendered through the health center at the NGO office. As better results keep coming in, the organization can expand services to other village clusters.
