Private hospitals in India treat 60% of patients but produce negligible research: study

A new study has revealed a stark disparity in research output between private hospitals and those attached to medical colleges in India, despite private hospitals handling the majority of the country's patient load. The study, published in the Journal of Medical Evidence of the BMJ group, analyzed research publications from January 2021 to December 2025 across Indian hospitals.

The findings show that the top 50 private hospitals without medical colleges produced an average of only 242 publications over the five-year period. In contrast, the top 50 hospitals with medical colleges averaged 1,530 publications. Leading the latter list were the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, with 6,932 publications, and Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, with 5,333.

Comparing India's research output with that of other countries reveals a significant gap. The average research output of the top 10 medical colleges in China exceeded 16,000 publications, with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and Peking University Health Science Centre leading. In the United States, the average was nearly 14,500, with Harvard and Johns Hopkins at the top; in the United Kingdom, it was 13,500, with the University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division and University College, London Medical School leading.

The study also noted that the Mayo Clinic in the US alone produces 8,000 papers annually—more than the entire Indian private sector. India's healthcare landscape is now dominated by private hospitals, many of which are corporate entities focused on profit generation, making education and research a low priority, the study observed.

“This study confirms that in spite of their dealing with most of the population, doctors in private hospitals in India do little research. There is a neglect of the enormous data that can be accessed from Indian patients going to the majority of Indian hospitals. This may be due to lack of incentive, absence of electronic hardware or priorities which are mainly commercial,” the study stated.

While India ranks fourth globally in the quantity of research publications—after the US, China, and the UK—its quality, measured by citation impact, drops it to ninth. This indicates that Indian papers are less frequently referenced and have limited influence on global medical science, according to the study conducted by Dr. Samiran Nundy and Dr. Parmanand Tiwari from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi.

Research and publication are key indicators of a medical institution's quality, with evidence linking high research output to better patient care. “The quality and quantity of research output is also a major factor in ranking medical institutions all over the world including the well-known US News and World Report as well as the National Institute Ranking Framework of India,” the study added.