As a corporate hospital can you spell out the vision that guides Indiana Hospital?
Indiana is a hospital that provides Indian patients healthcare that meets global standards. Basically, that has been our vision. India has multiple categories of hospitals, and their benchmarks on care and doctors vary. Some hospitals have good doctors, but unfortunately their equipment and investigation facilities are not modern enough. Some hospitals have both good facilities and competent staff, but the over-all atmosphere in them isn’t good. My vision is to create a comprehensive healthcare system that meets the highest standard in the world and make it available for patients at Indiana Hospital. The plan envisages setting up a system with all facilities under one roof, and provide super specialty services with warmth, compassion, and transparency.
Share with us the story behind the inception and development of the Indiana hospital.
My family hailed from Kumble, a small town in Kasargod district of Kerala. I used to accompany family elders on their visits to Mangalore off and on during my childhood. Even though it was part of Karnataka,
Mangaluru was the nearest large town for people in the northern region of Kasargod district.
When I began to practice as a doctor, I would find that at least half of the patients were from Kerala. Although Manipal too had emerged as a major hub of healthcare, Mangaluru was more accessible for people from Kerala due to its location near the interstate border. Within no time, I could assess that Mangaluru would be an ideal place for setting up a state-of-the art healthcare centre with potential clientele for its services from both states, viz, Kerala and Karnataka.
I even figured out that the city was lacking a centre where standard healthcare was available. It had several medical colleges but they were more of the nature of teaching and research hospitals. Of course, patients received the treatment, but mainly at the hands of the medical students not being accountable if things went wrong. It was around this moment that the idea of setting up a high-tech hospital struck me. It would induct latest and sophisticated technology and would be manned by doctors known for their expertise in varied fields of medicine and surgery and who would comply with standard norms and benchmarks and would benefit from best practices from elsewhere.
Initially, I thought of starting cardiology department but it soon dawned upon me that there was a latent demand for a multi-specialty hospital with the departments working in sync with each other. We launched around 20 departments at once. The Indiana Hospital can now boast of 30 to 35 departments providing round-the-clock services. Finances were mobilised for a public limited company to run the hospital. My brother and I are major stakeholders while remaining of the capital was raised from around 200 shareholders. All the shareholders gather at the general body meeting once in a year. This involvement brought their relatives and friends in touch with the management and also expanded the circle of those who could utilise the services of the hospital. The shareholders belonged to both Kerala and Karnataka states.
Indiana has a vastly improved diagnostic and surgical outcomes, strong systems and processes and a pool of specialty doctors. Please outline your strategies to further raise the bar on quality healthcare for your patients.
The Hospital provided the basic standard of healthcare for all groups of patients in all departments. It developed the tertiary care for ailments pertaining to cardiology, neuro-surgery and neurology. Some headway was made in effective interventions in diagnostics, radiology, emergency services, trauma-care, orthopaedics, etc. However, I feel that the Hospital is engaged in further developing the requisite expertise in transplantation in heart, kidney, liver and bone-marrow and complete cancer care. The work is on to develop facilities to take up these too. A full-fledged Nephrology Department and a centre for kidney transplantation are among our priority areas.
Indiana Hospital is the first one in Mangaluru to have been empanelled under National Accreditation Board for Hospitals. Share with us your experience on the journey to this quality certification.
We are the first corporate hospital in Mangaluru to get the NABH certification, so my idea was to establish a quality hospital. The patients deserve quality treatment and it is our duty to ensure that. That’s why we spent time and money to get this accreditation. At the next level I am looking for JCI (Joint Commission International ) Accreditation which is international accreditation. No hospital in Mangalore is having it. Accountability, quality and documentation are the main areas for JCI.