Tertiary healthcare
Also called: Tertiary care, Super-specialty care · Topic: Human Capital: Education, Health and Demographic Dividend · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Tertiary healthcare is the highest level of a health system. It provides specialised and super-specialty care, such as complex surgery, cancer treatment and intensive care (ICU). Patients usually reach it on referral, which means a doctor at a lower level sends them up for care that lower-level centres cannot give. It needs costly equipment, hospital beds and senior specialists, so it tends to be concentrated in a few big cities. Where it is missing, poor families pay for travel, lodging and lost wages. That raises out-of-pocket spending, the money households pay directly for treatment.
Example
The Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) was announced in August 2003 to correct regional imbalances in tertiary care. It is fully funded by the Centre. Under it, 22 new AIIMS have been approved, and 18 were fully functional in 2026. A patient in Bhubaneswar or Jodhpur can now get super-specialty treatment near home instead of travelling to Delhi.
Don't confuse with
- Primary healthcare: the first point of contact, such as health and wellness centres (now Ayushman Arogya Mandirs). It handles basic treatment, vaccination and health awareness, not specialist care.
- Secondary healthcare: care at district or sub-district hospitals with general specialists, such as a surgeon or a paediatrician (children's doctor). It sends patients needing super-specialty care up to the tertiary level.