PPPs success in healthcare

Power-packed discussion on PPPs success in healthcare brought out some concrete submissions

The hour-long discussion, at Healthcare Sabha 2018, was presented by Philips Healthcare, which goes with the tagline ‘Innovating meaningful healthcare’. The discussion was on how PPP will help to develop a pan-India, integrated healthcare system.

Initiating the panel discussion and giving the opening remarks, Jayakrushna Pani, Director, Government Business Philips HealthTech, said, “Our goal is to reach out to three million people ever year by 2025. Today, we have already touched upon 2.1 billion people in 2017 in India. Our focus segments in healthcare are preventive care, diagnostic and homecare. Philips is one of the trusted healthcare brands, we are working closely with some states and trying to enhance the patient staff experience, simplifying the data handling, equipping them to get appropriate data. These steps are taken as Philips Healthcare is committed to improve the delivery of patient care by continually aligning technology investments and create a culture of security.”

He further added that Philips is focussing on increasing PPP centres and they are currently working in Jharkhand and Haryana.

Informing that PPP model will have a wide scale impact in the remotest of the places in India, Pani informed that Philips has a long-term financial and technical strong partnership with the Manipal Group, which is a high volume-low margin business model.

“We would like to get into more such partnerships. As we are a technology-based company, we can’t hire doctors or paramedics but partnering with them can help us. The PPP should be people centric,”he added.

Taking the discussion forward on how Philips is now focussing on PPPs, Pranav Chandna, Director Solutions (PPP, Design, Consulting, LSP) Philips -Indian Subcontinent, said, “Philips Healthcare wants to make a meaningful impact, as PPP is always about making balance between the government and private players.”

Participating in the discussion, the delegates from the government hospitals listed out few areas that should be looked upon for workable PPPs viz; a well-structured contract policy before implementation, monitoring the performance of the private sector and the need for a co-operative management between the public and private sectors.

Summing up the session, Pani also added that the company is also encouraging local manufacturing under the Make-in-India initiative. Its Pune-based centre is becoming a manufacturing hub for Philips globally.