Here is a list of 10 things one would like to see happen in healthcare services arena in India in the New Year.

1. Healthcare Service providers should move faster towards recognising the patient as a customer and focusing on delivering ‘Total Patient Care’. This would include better medical care as well as much superior levels of hospital services. Hospitals need to invest heavily in people and process improvements to achieve the goal of ‘Total Patient Care’.

2. Investment in the hospital brand. Most hospitals in India are chary of investing in the brand and whatever little marketing communication that happens is purely tactical, meant to drive traffic or communicate the commencement of a new service or the addition of another doctor. This must change. Hospitals must find a credible and differentiated positioning in the consumer’s mind and move quickly to occupy it.

3. Develop an information resource pool that allows patients and caregivers to check out the hospital services, compare doctor’s qualifications, training, specialisation and years of experience.

4. Focus on wellness rather than illnesses. Indian hospitals are mostly about sickness and ordinary folks dread visiting hospitals. It would be a lot better if our hospitals also incorporated wellness services and promoted them aggressively. Prevention and community medicine should become critical areas of focus.

5. Develop sustainable and high quality outreach programs by seeking local community participation. I live next doors to Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi and I often wonder, wouldn’t it be great if this hospital ran a community health program in our area. The local community can offer space for the hospital to run and manage a small clinic with a round the clock nursing coverage and doctors (family physicians and specialists) visiting for a couple of hours everyday. Imagine, all major hospitals running maybe 5 such clinics in areas abutting them. The hospitals will not only get more patients, they will earn tremendous goodwill of the local community.

6. Use social media to create patient communities and facilitate constant exchange of thoughts and ideas. Let medical experts join in to provide guidance and keep the community interactions at an even keel. We had tried something like this at Artemis Health Institute in Gurgaon. Unfortunately it fizzled out once I moved on. More hospitals need to remain connected with their patients in a meaningful manner, even when they do not need the hospital. It is an investment in a relationship, which will pay dividends in the long term.

7. Improve Emergency services. I recall calling Apollo Hospitals once to rush an ambulance to my residence to pick up my wife who had accidently hurt herself and was bleeding profusely. I explained that I was at work and was on my way as well. I reached home before the ambulance and brought my wife to the Emergency in my car. The ambulance never reached my place because the Emergency services at the hospital kept calling my wife at our home landline phone to confirm whether she was really hurt!!!

8. Government run hospitals treating the poor are models of sloth, inefficiency and corruption. It would be great if private enterprise forges some kind of a win-win partnership with these hospitals and improves services. I am sure the savings from reducing crippling systemic inefficiencies will itself ensure decent profits for the private healthcare enterprises. The government must take initiatives in inviting a few carefully selected private healthcare organisations to participate in this experiment.

9. Health Insurance must penetrate deeper and wider. The claims processing should become less cumbersome. In this age of instant communication, hospitals and insurance companies manually fax documents, seek patient histories and look for loop holes to wriggle out of paying claims. This must end. Insurance companies and hospitals must connect with each other seamlessly and exchange information that helps patients get better service.

10. Rural and semi urban India must get its due share in the development of healthcare infrastructure. The government must encourage investments in primary and secondary care in these areas. Unless we have more and more people accessing reasonably good quality healthcare services close to where they live, the India growth story will remain a big sham.

Here is wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2010.

Pic courtesy www.muhealth.org