Narayana Hrudayalaya ..

Narayana Hrudayalaya continues its forward march unhindered ..   

I had the class case discussion this morning (28 Oct '20) with MBA sem 3 students. 

NH has satellite centres across the state of Karnataka where patients at remote places are connected to specialist doctors in NH over satellite links for the first examination to decide whether the patient needs immediate attention at Bangalore or can take treatment at the remote locations. NH has expertly aligned high technology to help in offering high quality medical care to the patients.  Unlike in a mall where depending on the customers, new counters can be opened to handle customer traffic, in hospitals, due to the nature of specialisations, often it becomes difficult to identify and employ medical area experts as fast as in malls or stores. Queues therefore become inevitable.

Click here for a case study ..

The students had two issues to raise reg the NH care.

1. A recent case of a patient not getting immediate care citing following  Covid protocol for treatment because of which the patient died. NH would have been unaware whether the patient was suffering from Covid due to comorbidity and hence considering the safety of the healthcare professionals and other patients in the hospital, doctors would have insisted on Covid test certificate of the patient. It is sad that an unfortunate incident had to happen.

2. No proper planning as demand often outstrips the capacity, particularly at the dental dept and patients have to wait for hours on end.

In general, the healthcare system in the country has to develop a lot to match with those in developed nations. Some of the issues are highlighted here, for followup by the authorities.

1. While Corporate hospitals are after money, the govt hospitals in most cases are in a a very despicable case, either poorly funded or badly mismanaged. . 

2. Most of the time hospitals hear that a patient is covered by insurance, the hospital asks the patient to take necessary and unnecessary tests to help identify the issue - an ethical issue. Are the tests really needed or not ?

3. While in the west healthcare has been given preference, upto about 14-15 % of budget outlay, in India it has been woefully low over the years and is slowly beginning to pick up. We have less capacity in comparison to the demand.

4. The VVIP culture which is widely prevalent across the country, more often than not, disturbs the needed patients at the hospital waiting for care. The VVIP culture has to be stopped across the country.