Vibhu Talwar, Managing Director, Moolchand Medcity
One of Indias foremost names in healthcare, Moolchand has been setting standards for excellence in healthcare for the past half century. Vibhu Talwar, Managing Director, Moolchand Medcity, believes that redefining the healthcare system can bring more quality and excellence towards the patients. In conversation with Ekta Srivastava, ENN
What are the key achievements of the Moolchand Hospital so far?
Moolchand began with a legacy of philanthropic endeavors has spanned more than 80 years. Moolchand Trust was created in 1928 at Lahore, present day Pakistan and was started with an initial endowment of Rs. 4 million. Last year, Moolchand expands its footprints with an intention to bring the best of healthcare services available in Delhi to Agra and Western Uttar Pradesh. Moolchands quality, service and innovation mindset has always been recognized and the hospital has received prestigious awards like the IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Award. Moolchand group hospitals have multiple accreditations including NABH, NABL and JCI amongst others.
How the group is planning to provide comprehensive tertiary care?
Moolchand is recognized to be a leader in healthcare and is recognized for excellence in Womens Health, Orthopaedics, Emergency Medicine and Critical Care among other areas. Last year we launched Moolchand Medcity, Agra that intends to offer comprehensive tertiary care services including high-end diagnostics, emergency and critical care services. It is the intention of Moolchand to bring cutting-edge healthcare to Agra so that patients do not have to travel to Delhi for the treatment.
Initially the focus specialties will include Cardiology, Critical Care Medicine, Dental, Dermatology, Emergency & Urgent Care, Endocrinology, ENT, Faciomaxillary Surgery, Gastroenterology, Internal Medicine, Nephrology, Neurology, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Orthopedics, Ophthalmology, Pathology, Urology and Radiology amongst other areas.
In Phase 2, the hospital is intended to launch a Cancer hospital and have already purchased the land adjacent to Moolchand Medcity Agra.
What are the latest trends in the Healthcare in India?
With respect to the current trends in Indian healthcare, I would broadly classify the trends in five buckets i.e. Increased flow of Private Equity investment: Private equity firms have played a pivotal role over the past decade in scaling up organization across various segments such as hospitals, and diagnostics chains. As a result, we have seen the emergence of national and regional chains. In addition, venture capitalists have incubated new models and have helped establish successful and profitable new healthcare businesses in cancer care and eye care.
Private equity player have made good to excellent returns in this sector. As a result, increasingly larger amounts of capital will continue to be deployed behind established ideas like national and regional hospital chains, pathology chains and eye care chains. This funding will be towards new firms as well as further funding of market leaders. In addition, there will be continued focus on funding potential new businesses of tomorrow like daycare, dental, dialysis, and in-vitro fertilization.
Consolidation in healthcare sector: M & A has been a thrust area for many healthcare institutions as it helps to optimize costs and bring efficiencies in process and procurement. The healthcare sector is going to see further consolidation.
Focusing towards tier II cities: With the growth of Indias economy over the past decade, the disposable income in tier II cities have increased manifold and people have a propensity to spend on quality healthcare services. Significant land price escalation in key metros has increasingly made
new projects in these cities less viable. Hence, large healthcare chains find these markets attractive given the latent demand-supply gap, the relatively low cost of land, and lower competitive intensity for quality and higher end services. In addition, larger players are aggressively scaling their networks by venturing into multiple untapped markets simultaneously.
Emergence of new single-specialty businesses: In the past few years, there have been success stories of single-specialty chains in diagnostics and eye care, which have demonstrated the attractiveness of these spaces versus the hospital provider space in terms of simplicity of business model, rapid scalability, relatively lowcapital intensity, shorter breakevens and extremely attractive operating economics. In the next 3-5 years, we would see the emergence of such single- specialty businesses.
Increasing collaboration across companies: Increasingly, key firms in the sector will collaborate at various levels to compete effectively. A bias to do everything will increasingly shift towards companies focusing on areas of their core competency and relative advantage. In addition, they will increasingly try to maximize returns on their existing assets by partnering to deliver existing services more effectively or to introduce new services.
We are already witnessing this change. Leading hospitals are forming alliances with single speciality chains such as pathology and radiology chains, IVF centres, eye clinics, physiotherapy centres, cancer chains, etc., to effectively deliver services and jointly unlock more value. In addition, daycare firms have partnered with hospital groups for select markets as equity partners.
We aspire to be the lifelong healthcare partner of our customers by delivering on their healthcare wishlist: superb physicians, cuttingedge technology, compassionate care, integrity and affordable excellence.
What kind of emergency services do you have?
Moolchands Centre for Emergency and Urgent Care provide comprehensive emergency services benchmarked on international protocols. Our Emergency Department (ED) is staffed with a team of 20 emergency doctors experienced in caring over a period of 24 hours. We have a dedicated resuscitation bay, fully equipped operation theater and emergency procedure rooms for trauma and surgical emergencies. We have dedicated observation area for intensive monitoring, advance cardiac life support ambulance services. Moolchand in partnership with the Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University, USA to offer 3-year Post Graduate Program in Emergency Medicine. Our emergency staff is hired by physicians, who are board certified in emergency services and trained registered nurses.
What is your road map ahead?
We have committed 500 crores to our expansion plan in the next 3 to 4 years. Add to our existing bed capacity in Delhi, by adding another 400 beds in the next 2-3 years. We will expand our group presence through acquisitions. Today people are willing to pay in the healthcare sector. They now dont hesitate in spending big hospitals if they are getting better facilities then government hospitals. So, we are planning more to open up in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, which is an excellent opportunity. Hope more big players will start moving to it.
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