About – Assam Healthcare Cooperative

Vision & Mission

Vision

Assam Healthcare Cooperative Society Ltd. envisions a future where healthcare in Assam is owned, shaped, and safeguarded by its citizens—affordable, transparent, preventive, and ethically governed. By harnessing the collective strength of its members, the Society seeks to reduce financial hardship, promote appropriate and evidence-based care (reduce unnecessary investigations and medicalisation), and build community-owned healthcare infrastructure supported by telemedicine and quality transparency. This vision is rooted in solidarity, accountability, and public good, ensuring that no family is left vulnerable due to illness and that healthcare remains a shared social asset rather than a private burden.

Mission

Assam Healthcare Cooperative Society Ltd. exists to mobilise the collective strength of citizens to transform healthcare from a fragmented, cost-driven service into a people-centred public good. Our mission is to:

Reduce out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure through cooperative bargaining, partnerships, and efficient service models
Promote preventive, appropriate, and evidence-based care across the life course
Develop community-owned healthcare infrastructure, including diagnostic services, elective care, and high-volume, low-complexity surgical services.
Integrate telemedicine, Hospital-at-Home, and Virtual Ward models to extend care closer to home and reduce unnecessary hospitalisations.
Strengthen transparency and accountability through patient-centred quality measurement and hospital quality ratings.
Enable ethical partnerships with government, CSR contributors, philanthropic organisations, and healthcare professionals for public-interest health initiatives.
Ensure democratic governance in which members participate in decision-making and oversight.

Through these actions, AHCSL seeks not merely to support its members but to reshape Assam’s healthcare landscape in the public interest.

Note: Inappropriate medicalisation carries the dangers of unnecessary labelling, poor treatment decisions, iatrogenic illness, and economic waste. As a result, resources are diverted from treating or preventing more serious diseases. At a deeper level, it may help to feed unhealthy obsessions with health, obscure or mystify sociological or political explanations for health problems, and focus undue attention on pharmacological, individualised, or privatised solutions.

Medicalisation: peering from inside medicine, BMJ 2002;324:866
Rational, cost-effective use of investigations in clinical practice, BMJ 2002;324:783
When Is a Medical Treatment Unnecessary?, by Lisa Rosenbaum, October 23, 2013, The New Yorker

Principles & Values

1. Citizen Ownership

Healthcare systems should belong to the people they serve.
Members are not customers—they are co-owners, stakeholders, and custodians of the cooperative.

2. Solidarity & Collective Strength

We believe that shared effort creates shared security.
By pooling resources, voice, and responsibility, citizens can achieve outcomes impossible in isolation.

3. Equity & Access

Healthcare must be accessible regardless of income, geography, or social status.
Equity is not an aspiration—it is a design principle.

4. Prevention Before Profit

We prioritise prevention, early intervention, and appropriateness of care over volume-driven or profit-led practices.

5. Transparency & Accountability

Quality, outcomes, costs, and patient experience must be visible and understandable.
Trust is built through openness and accountability.

6. Ethics & Evidence

All initiatives are guided by clinical evidence, professional integrity, and respect for patient dignity.
Unnecessary medicalisation and exploitation have no place in ethical healthcare.

7. Community Partnership

Lasting health improvement requires collaboration—between citizens, professionals, institutions, and communities.

8. Sustainability & Stewardship

Resources entrusted to the cooperative—member contributions, CSR funds, and philanthropic donations—are managed responsibly, transparently, and solely for public benefit.

Our Commitment

Assam Healthcare Cooperative Society Ltd. is committed to building a healthcare system that is:

By the citizen.
For the citizen.
Accountable to the citizen.

This commitment guides every partnership we form, every service we develop, and every future we imagine.

Strategy

Rooted in cooperative values and principles, our strategy is to develop a sustainable healthcare enterprise that improves affordability and access by aggregating citizen demand and aligning with like-minded civic organisations and ethical healthcare providers. By sharing capabilities, standardising processes, and coordinating care delivery, we generate efficiencies and scale that enable us to compete effectively with fragmented, profit-driven models, while upholding transparency, clinical appropriateness, and patient dignity.

Vision & Mission

Vision & Mission

Principles & Values

Strategy

More about the Cooperative

Board of Directors

Any more questions? Feel free to write us a mail!