India ranks third for healthcare quality in Ipsos survey

India ranks third globally for healthcare quality on the Ipsos Quality of Care Perception Index, according to the Ipsos Health Service Report 2026 released on 16 October. Nearly seven in ten Indians, 68%, rate the quality of healthcare available to them positively, while 64% say they trust the healthcare system to give them the best treatment when they need it. Malaysia tops the index and Singapore sits second, with India third.

The Ipsos Health Service Report 2026 surveyed 22,528 adults across 32 countries, and it measures public perception rather than clinical outcomes. It asks people how easy they find it to see a doctor, how much they trust the system and whether they think care is getting better. The global average for rating healthcare quality positively was 45%, well below the 68% recorded in India.

Healthcare quality and access score highly in India

India also recorded the highest result among the 32 countries for ease of getting a doctor's appointment, with 73% of respondents saying they could secure an appointment when needed. Access to pharmacies scored higher still, with 81% saying they could easily reach a pharmacy. Those access scores help explain the strong India healthcare ranking, since people judge a system partly by how quickly they can reach care.

Vietnam, Australia and the Netherlands take the fourth, fifth and sixth places on the index, with Thailand, South Korea, Spain and South Africa completing the top ten. Ipsos, the Paris based market research firm, noted that citizens in India are significantly more likely than people in many advanced economies to say healthcare is accessible, improving and worthy of their trust. In many richer countries, the report found, debates are dominated by waiting lists, overstretched services, workforce shortages and falling confidence in care.

Healthcare quality gains sit beside affordability worries

The same survey flagged affordability as India's most pressing healthcare challenge. The Ipsos Health Service Report 2026 found that 42% of respondents named the cost of treatment as a major challenge, and 74% agreed that many people in India cannot afford good healthcare. Concerns about overstretched services were reported by 59% of respondents, and 62% said they experienced long waits for doctor appointments.

Quality and safety concerns also appeared in the findings. Poor quality treatment was cited by 36% of respondents, inadequate cleanliness standards by 28% and poor safety by 25%. Those figures sit beside the headline result and show that a high India healthcare ranking on perception does not mean every patient experience is good.

The report therefore gives two readings at once. On trust and access, India stands with the highest rated systems in the survey. On cost, the gap between confidence in care and the ability to pay for it remains wide, and healthcare affordability is the issue Ipsos singles out as the one that could shape the next phase of healthcare development in India.

The wider pattern in the Ipsos Health Service Report 2026 is that wealthier countries spend more on care yet their citizens often report less satisfaction, weighed down by waiting times and bureaucracy. India's high placement suggests that, in the public's eyes, a system can feel good to use even when resources are stretched. Healthcare quality in the survey is a judgement made by patients, not a clinical score, and that distinction matters when reading the India healthcare ranking: it shows how care feels to the people who use it, while the affordability figures show what still stands in their way. Healthcare quality and healthcare affordability pull in opposite directions in the same survey, and both halves deserve weight. Readers should treat healthcare quality here as a survey judgement: it records how patients rate the care they can reach, not how a hospital scores on clinical measures. That is why healthcare quality can rank third while cost worries stay high in the same report. The headline is a healthcare quality ranking built from patient views, and it should be read as such.