If you walked the length of Sat Masjid Road in Dhanmondi a decade ago, you would have passed perhaps three private hospitals. Today, by BHRF's count, you would pass eleven, plus a further six diagnostic-only centres. That density is not unique to Dhanmondi. The country's private-hospital sector has more than doubled in a decade — and the conversation about what this expansion has actually cost households has been remarkably absent from the headlines.
The case for the boom, as the industry frames it, is straightforward. Public hospitals have been over-stretched for decades. The middle class wanted shorter waiting times, cleaner wards, and more individualised care. The private sector responded. The country, on this view, is healthier for it.
The case for caution is less visible. Out-of-pocket spending on health, which the SDG framework identifies as the single most important indicator of financial protection, has barely moved as the private sector has expanded — because the private sector is, almost by definition, where the out-of-pocket spending is happening. A second-order effect is that some of the country's most experienced clinicians have moved their primary practice from the public to the private sector, leaving public hospital wards staffed disproportionately by junior doctors.
None of this is an argument against private hospitals. It is an argument for measuring more carefully what the boom has produced — and for designing policy that captures both the gains in access and the losses in financial protection.
BHRF will publish a long data feature on the geographic distribution of new private hospital openings later this quarter.
