Achievers

Every month Express Healthcare highlights achievements of doctors and other professionals and contributors to the healthcare industry. To nominate your employees/colleagues for Achievers, mail healthcare@expressindia.com and we will get in touch with you!

A Doctor's Prescription for Branding

With over two decades of experience in healthcare, Dr Sanjiv Malik (44), Regional Director, Max Healthcare is switching hats to write a book on branding and marketing. "With corporatisation of healthcare, branding and marketing of hospitals have assumed significant importance, and determine the success and failure of a hospital," he avers. He has set March 2008 as the deadline to finish the book. He intends to cover topics like strategies to understand and meet customer needs, methods and need for creating a brand, ways to have an edge over competition, and steps to sustain the brand over 350 pages and 12-14 chapters.

However, Dr Malik hasn't approached a publisher yet for the book which he is writing in any available free time. Aimed at hospital administration students and young hospital administrators, the contents of the book are gleaned as much from his real experience of running hospitals as from age-old ideas and practices in branding and marketing. "Despite the mushrooming of healthcare management institutes, it is sad that we don't have dedicated books on marketing and branding for the healthcare industry. This book will definitely fill that vacuum," he predicts.

Next up is a book on basic principles of financial management of a hospital, but only after December 2008, as it is still at a conceptual stage.

A 'Joy'ous Transition

With the illustrious Anupam Verma moving on to bigger roles, Joy Chakraborty has stepped in as the new Deputy Director, Administration of Mumbai's PD Hinduja Hospital. After nine years in Chennai's Sri Ramchandra Medical Centre (SRMC), where he joined as a trainee administrator with a PG programme in Hospital Administration, Chakraborty is excited about his new role. And he is not daunted by the colossal responsibility that his 33-year-young shoulders have to bear. The role demands that he takes absolute control of administration (non-clinical and service areas) and is available 24x7. "I understand the immense responsibility and expectations of people from me. I will discharge my duty to the best of my capabilities." His destiny changed with a chance meeting with one of the promoters of the Hinduja Group. "After understanding the vision of the expanding Hinduja Group, I felt it would be challenging to undertake this responsibility and be an agent to turn the vision into reality," he says. Right now, he is studying various administrative systems and processes to chalk out reforms. "I want to work on process improvement, business process re-engineering, introduction of value-added services and also on brand and positioning of the hospital," he reveals. All eyes are on Chakraborty's dreams and promised efforts.

Delivering Health to the Masses

A manager one day and a community doctor the next. That's Mumbai's Dr Seema Gupta (41) for you. She is equally passionate about her roles as a domain consultant from Wipro HealthCare IT and as a doctor treating slum dwellers. Every week, she offers free consultation for slum dwellers in Santacruz. "Rich people can go anywhere for treatment, but it's these poor people who require medical aid the most," says Dr Gupta, who also runs her own hospital management consultancy. Her story began in 1994, when she was appalled at the unhealthy condition of children in slums in her locality. Along with some like-minded doctors, she joined the NGO All India Balkanji Bari, which works to uplift slum children. What started as a mission to treat underprivileged children has now been extended to adults as well. "Earlier, it was more education rather than treatment as the children lived in unbelievably unhygienic conditions and suffered from running noses and other ailments. So, it was more about inculcating healthy habits," recalls Dr Gupta. The NGO provides the space and medicine, "I prescribe general treatment or if required, refer to a specialist." To make the dwellers realise the value of the medicine, a minimal fee of Rs 5 is charged by the NGO, because "they feel they have paid for it, so they cannot afford to waste it," she says.

Compiled by Rita Dutta and Nancy Singh