Kasi Raju, COO, Care Hospital, believes although there are a lot of issues prevailing in Indian healthcare, it has the potential to climb new highs
What is your take on the Indian healthcare sector?
The Indian healthcare sector is undergoing phenomenal expansion. Private hospitals and continued investment in the public health programmes are driving the boom. Together this, health infra- structure serves a population of 1 billion, growing at about two percent annually. Indias over 300 million strong middle class is driving unprecedented demand for quality health care. The combination of high quality services and low cost facilities is attracting regular stream of international patients. Costs of advanced surgeries in India are 10-15 times lower than anywhere in the world. The time is right for us to scale our operations and capitalise on the emerging opportunities in Indias healthcare segment.
How do you think the upcoming technologies can help in providing healthcare to all?
We have always considered technology as one of the key enablers for enhanced patient care. CARE was one of pioneers in implementation of telemedicine and telehealth, to deliver affordable healthcare to all sections of the society ( Urban to rural population). Technology adaption should go beyond bar-coding, analyser interfaces, imaging solutions etc and ensure cost effective health- care delivery for all. Today technology per se has become more reliable and affordable. However the key to effective healthcare delivery would be to carefully uate and adapt suitable technologies keeping patient care and patient wellness as the prime focus. Upcoming technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), mobile devices, speech recognition, handwriting recognition etc. sound very promising and would be ideal for the healthcare delivery. mortality audits and post procedure complications along with facility audits to im-\ prove patient and staff safety Implementation of quality standards for labs (NABL), Hospital (NABH) and blood banks (NABB)
What are the IT investments your hospital has made over the years?
We realised that ICT is no longer a simple tool for billing and accounting. Hence we have taken IT as one of the key elements in all our strategic decisions. Considerable investments have been made in terms of building a robust and state of the art infrastructure (including LAN/WAN and data centre), implementation of Oracle ERP etc. Plans are on to move towards paper- less and filmless operations, by revamping our current IT applications and implementation of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) across all our facilities. A comprehensive Patient Relationship Management (PRM) platform is being deployed to enhance patient experience. With ever in- creasing demand for on-time information for patient care and business decisions, it is clear that ICT based analytical tools like Business Intelligence (BI), Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) will be the enablers.
How do you ensure quality and patient safety in your hospital?
For that we do patient satisfaction surveys to understand patients experience and to learn about opportunities to improve care. Also we perform outcome audits such as mortality audits and post procedure complications along with facility audits to im- prove patient and staff safety Implementation of quality standards for labs (NABL), Hospital (NABH) and blood banks (NABB)
What are the top five challenges you face in the hospital operation and ution and how do you sail through them?
The five challenges we face in hospital operations and ution are: fixed costs in the hospital, counselling of patients, avail- ability of full time star consultants, full time availability of trained supportive staffs, lack of trained nursing staffs To sail thought the challenges we have done cost cutting on electricity and fuel expenses, lean staffing management in hospital, cutting down innovative costs. We did proper video counselling, proper documentation of reports, one to one interaction between the consultant and the patient attenders. For retention strategy we have undertaken regular training sessions, continuous training programmes, team bonding programmes and motivation programmes
What is your take on the term affordable healthcare?
By affordable healthcare we mean, immediate action to preserve and expand coverage, essential health benefit requirements, community health insurance options, affordable coverage choices. Affordable healthcare is essential healthcare which is scientifically and practically sound bases social acceptable methods and technology. The healthcare provided by the various institutions to be universally accessible to each and every person in the world. The most important factor would be to facilitate the healthcare by different means for the underprivileged.
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