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XI National Seminar- Symbiosis
Hospitals Provide Profitability of Only 18% as Opposed to 22% in Hospitality
Another year passed by, and the XI national seminar held
at Symbiosis lived up to its promise
Eminent specialists from the field of healthcare management
and medico legal experts participated in lectures and interactive sessions at
the 'XI National Seminar on Hospital/ Healthcare Management and medico legal
systems' hosted at Symbiosis Vishwabhawan from 1-2 May, 2009. The symposium
tried to reflect upon the issues that grapple the healthcare sector today, giving
a 360 degree perspective of all the growth drivers, stakeholders and challenges
that healthcare faces today and in the future.
Day One
The first session kicked off with a panel discussion based
on the central theme of 'Management Mantras of Healthcare Sector: An Overview'.
The eminent panelists included, Dr B Soma Raju, Chairman and Managing Director,
Care Hospitals; Binay Kumar Agarwala, Senior VP and Head- Health Business Strategy
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance; Dr Krishna Reddy, Dr Chandrashekhar Potkar,
Director, Medical and Regulatory Affairs, Pfizer; Dr Aloke C Mullick, Anjan
Bose and Dr Rakesh Kapur, Manager, Ernst and Young Consultancy Services. The
chairperson of the session was Dr Narottam Puri, President of Medical Strategy
and Quality, Fortis Healthcare, Delhi. He set the stage for the panel discussion
by introducing the audience to the dynamics of the Indian healthcare industry.
"Healthcare, globally, is the largest industry in the world with a nine
per cent of global GDP spend. GDP spend in USA is 16per cent and India's is
roughly six per cent out of which the Government contribution is one per cent.
Opportunities in the healthcare sector include various aspects like telemedicine,
medical equipment, health insurance, clinical trials, medical value travel etc
with pharmaceutical being the most important," he informed. As for the
Indian scenario he added, "India is the second fastest growing major economy
and the third largest in the world, based on purchasing power parity. Healthcare
is one of the largest service sectors in India with an expected rise of 15 per
cent per annum. Its contribution to the GDP is expected to increase to approximately
6.1 per cent. India also poses a huge investment opportunity amounting to approximately
$80 billion."
The first speaker who was then invited to throw light on the hospital sector
was Dr B Somaraju, CMD, Care Hospitals, Hyderabad. The key points covered by
him were advances in modern medicine, imaging technologies and diagnostics,
and how the reach of major medical advancements to the common man is still a
major issue. He said, "The care provided to the patient should be safe,
effective, patient centred, timely, efficient and equitable. The core ideologies
comprising core purpose, core value and core model (healthcare delivery, education
and training and research and development) to be defined. We need to strike
a balance between two extremes- medicine being a science and being a business."
The succeeding speaker from the same group, Dr Krishna Reddy, MD, Care Group
spoke about how the first principle of management should be the reason for existence
in a profession. He shared the strategies, guiding forces and principles of
his own organisation. Said Dr Reddy, "The growth of an organisation and
the individual depends on the ability to adapt to market conditions and circumstances."
Talking about insurance sector, it was BK Agarwala, Senior
VP, ICICI Prudential who covered every nuance of healthcare insurance, right
from need of insurance to the challenges, case studies and the way forward.
He reasoned for the need for insurance. "India needs to introduce prepaid
plans. In India, over 85 per cent population does not have any kind of health
cover and the Government share of healthcare expenses is less than 25 per cent.
The insurance market in the financial year 2008 was Rs 5,125 crore. About 40
per cent of people who have inpatient treatment sell assets or borrow money
from out of the household for the medical expenses. Health insurance is needed
because in developing countries people mainly pay from their pockets and have
to forego other important financial goals and aspirations. Globally publicly
funded healthcare is facing fiscal constraints in the time of this recession,"
he said.
He further added, "In India there will be 113 million people over the age
of 60 by 2016 and they will be vulnerable due to lack of cover by health insurance.
The breakdown of traditional joint family system and lack of employer cover
post retirement. Another problem is that the high premiums may be difficult
to fund post retirement. Expense per person is likely to be more than six times
that of 35 year old.
Anjan Bose, Senior Director and Business Head, Philips Healthcare India, Sri
Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal and Philips Electronics India, delivered the talk
in two parts. The first one dealt with the strategies acquired by Philips and
the other one involving a case study.
He said, "Customers and patients are becoming increasingly aware of their
rights and choices. Manufacturing companies should try and provide the technology
as well as make the ambience less intimidating in hospitals, which would make
patients more comfortable and less anxious." Speaking on Philips business
strategy he said, "Philips has had two acquisitions in recent past in India.
The steps involved in the acquisition comprise three phases and areas of consideration.
Phase I is information collection and synthesis (economics outlook, demographic
shift, shift in end-user demand pattern, competitive landscape analysis, market
analysis and segmentation). Phase II is strategising and decision making ( portfolio
gap analysis: current v/s future with a detailed evaluation of alternatives
to target, option generation and evaluation to identify the risks and assess
the valuation and strategic fit) and phase III is execution (implementation,
monitoring and feedback.) The gap between death rate (0.73 per cent) and birth
rate (2.6 per cent ) in India as well as the demand supply gap should be taken
as an opportunity."
The next speaker to take this discussion forward was Dr Rakesh Kapur, Manager,
Ernst and Young Consultancy Services. He reasoned about why investors still
would not like to build a hospital. He said, "In spite of an existing untapped
market both in urban and rural India, hospitals are unable to expand in a profitable
manner. Hospitals provide a profitability of only 18 per cent whereas the hospitality
industry has a profitability of more than 22 per cent. This makes investment
in hospitality a better option than healthcare. Unless the profitability is
more than 45per cent in any business, then investment in that sector in not
advisable." Dr Kapur explained that profitability of a hospital will depend
on its business model. And the business model consists of the functional mix,
the specialty mix, the service level, the service mix and the growth model.
Then the discussion went on to state that nowadays many small
primary care units catering to niche markets are more profitable than large
hospitals. Examples include diabetic clinics and pain management clinics.
Dr NarottamPuri |
Dr SB Majumdar |
Dr Krishna Reddy |
Dr Sujeet Chatterjee |
The post-lunch conference started off with 'Future of Hospital
Designing' by Dr Vivek Desai MD, Hosmac. Speaking on the hospitals of future,
Dr Desai said that hospitals will be technologically intensive, sensitive to
energy needs. Stressing upon the need for careful planning, he said, "The
investments are long term and at present there are no standards for hospital
engineering in India. Hospitals are highly engineered and doctors are not too
conversant with the various architectural integrities. The construction of a
hospital constitutes more than 50 per cent cost of the entire hospital projects.
The real requirement is to design a building that will inhibit change of function
least, and not one that will fit specific function best." Dr Desai added
that there has been a shift of the process of healing from 'treating illness'
to 'creating wellness'.
The next topic was 'Overview Of Laws Relating to Healthcare' chaired by advocate
Ram Jethmalani. The speakers were consultant lawyers DrNikhil Datar and Dr Sanjay
Gupte. According to both, the objective of the talk was to make a fruitful discussion
on making a change in the existing legal system of India towards trying to make
it more safe, and transparent, better in quality.
Said Dr Gupte, "Our laws are mainly made through a knee-jerk reaction without
any retrospective thoughts. Before creating and attempting to implement a new
law it is not ensured that the people implementing it are serious and efficient.
Some doctors find PCPNDT act uselessly bothering them a large number of times.
For example, at times, even issues such as not filling forms properly according
to the strict guidelines of the law lead to imprisonment of the concerned doctors.
Day 2
After an intensive and long session of day one, day two began
by the first speaker of the day, Dr Sujit Chatterjee, CEO, Dr LH Hiranandani
Hospital, who overtook the audience, mostly comprising students, through the
benefits of Electronic Medical Records (EMR). He spoke on 'the A-Z of Electronic
Medical Records'. After taking through these basics yet extremely important
fragment of healthcare, it was time for an international perspective on healthcare
management. It was Dr Azad Moopen, Chairman, Dr Moopand Group, who did the honors.
He spoke on 'Salient Features: Gulf Co-operation Council Countries Healthcare'.
"The service out there is a hybrid of both Government and private institutions.
The funding is mainly by the Government with a growing presence of insurance.
The health sector is also strictly regulated by the Government. In the GCC,
primary care is provided by combination of public and private sectors with a
pre-dominance of private players who cater for the expatriates. Secondary and
tertiary healthcare is provided mostly by the public sector. Emergency care
is almost exclusively provided by the Government and is free-of-cost. High tertiary
care is still an emerging sector and currently majority of the patients seek
treatment abroad. There is a tremendous shortage of trained manpower in Gulf
and this can be tapped by Indian professionals who wish to explore their opportunities
in the Gulf," elaborated Dr Moopen.
A panel discussion was held on 'Healthcare Communication:
Branding and Marketing' which had participation of Vivek Shukla, Healthcare
Consultant and Dr PK Grant, Consultant Cardiologist, Ruby Hall Clinic. The session
was chaired by Prof. UjjwalKumar Chowdhury, Director, SIMC. He stressed upon
the importance of advertising, branding and communication in healthcare. He
highlighted the fact that it is a means of introduction of services and products.
Vivek Shukla spoke on the types and ways of branding. He gave an example of
a 100-bed hospital in growth phase, which had 78 per cent cases from referrals.
"Its strategy was to focus more on PR than advertising. It created a brand
through PR by focusing on events, case studies shown on TV, interviews etc.
Outdoor PR was emphasised. Samples of brand built on PR are Blackberry, Harry
Potter, Star Bucks Coffee, Ghajni." Dr PK Grant said, "A hospital
in today's world is a sophisticated hotel with good infrastructure and state-of-the-art
equipment. If you have the latest and best equipment with good service, patient
follow up is inevitable."
Overall, in summary, as it was evidenced, not even a single stone was left unturned
when it comes to issues dealing to healthcare issues, be it medico-legal and
non-legal. The students were sure shot enlightened, entertained as well as confident
about their new insight on healthcare beyond the world of their books.
EH News Bureau
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