Aditya Vij, CEO, Fortis Hospital, says hospital management is related to the usage technology by skilled medical staff
What is your take on the Indian healthcare sector?
The size of Indian healthcare sector was USD 66 Billion in 2011, with healthcare providers accounting for about USD 33 billion and private healthcare providers making up USD 24 billion. This space is dominated by a large number of small and medium sized players – It is estimated that 85 percent of hospitals have 30 beds or less, while 10 percent have between 30 and 100 beds. Only five percent of hospitals have more than 100 beds with only 1 percent having more than 200 beds.
How do you think the upcoming technologies can help in providing healthcare to all?
There have been rapid technological advancements in healthcare and it is believed that this will only accelerate in the coming decade. These technologies help in improving treatments, awareness, affordability and access of healthcare. For example, Interventional cardiology has transformed cardiac care over the past decade.
In future, healthcare system will cater to an increasing number of health problems, both chronic diseases and preventive care. Improvements in communication technologies will offer better collaboration for various aspects of healthcare to deliver the required care. This would mean that hospitals would have a more active role in supervising technical care outside of the hospital, and in making specialised knowledge accessible to all parts of healthcare system.
What are the IT investments your hospital has made over the years? How do you think ICT is a game changer in the overall hospital operation?
Keeping pace with our rapid growth in establishing a strong healthcare delivery network across country, we have continuously upgraded our super speciality units to applications that allow for Electronic Health Records (EHR), implementation of protocols, and practice of out- come based medicine. Currently, we are running projects to upgrade our back-office systems to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. An integrated Health Information Services (HIS) and financial system is being implemented to re-engineer processes, e-institutionalise improved processes across various Fortis Hospitals in India and automate standardised processes.
For improved patient care we use a RFID base real time location system. Recently we also have introduced CritiNext, a Tele-ICU, to provide distinctive care to patient population in Tier II and Tier III cities. This initiative aims to bridge demand- supply gap of trained manpower in ICUs in remote area hospitals . Patients would be monitored and managed by clinical experts from Fortis Escorts Central Command Centre. We have already gone live with project at Raipur and Dehardun and will expand this gradually.
How do you ensure quality and patient safety for a super-speciality hospital like Fortis?
Clinical excellence and patient-centricity are guiding principles of service delivery at Fortis. This is reflected in every functional area of the company, beginning from hospital architecture, clinical and support service processes, bed-to-floor space ratio, nurse-to-patient ratio, and so on.
What is your take on the term affordable healthcare? What strategy you think can come handy in making the term true for Indian population?
To address the need of undeserved patient systems, Fortis launched a secondary care format brand Fortis General. Fortis General provides quality, reliable, accessible, and affordable healthcare to the growing middle class and sections below. It will primarily (may not be exclusively) focus on cities outside metros and tier-I cities, substantially increasing the geographic and demographic reach of Fortis healthcare delivery network. It will open up a new segment as more than 46 percent of patients in tier II and tier III cities travel over 100 kms from small towns and rural areas to seek medical care. Low land cost and availability will also facilitate expansion.
What are your views on the regulatory issues of healthcare?
The complex set of regulations for starting a new hospital varies from state to state. For example, in context of fire protection and safety regulations for hospital buildings, each state follows different set of rules and has different criteria for building height restrictions.
In the context of construction of new hospitals, Floor Space Index (SPI) norms for hospitals and commercial buildings are same in most of the states. Few state governments e.g. Maharashtra allows additional FSI for trust hospitals but this benefit is not extended to private hospitals. We are also facing issue of collecting payments from Government agencies such as Ex-servicemen Contributory Health Scheme and Central Government Health Scheme for treatments provided
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