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In the Reimagining India Hospital Infra series, we interview some of the brightest minds in the Indian hospital segment to examine how the rapid adoption of cutting-edge design and new technology can build smart, robust and responsive hospitals for 137 million Indians. In this issue, Mrinmoy Bhattacharjee from eHEALTH speaks to Dr. Biren Chauhan, Group COO, Sunshine Global Hospitals, believes the Covid-19 pandemic has played a “critical” role in accelerating the adoption of infrastructure best practices and bats for embracing health management skills out of the world . This and more:
How is the Covid-19 pandemic, “Atmanirbhar Bharat” and the various government health directives promoting the growth of the Indian hospital infrastructure segment?
The Covid-19 showed us our strengths and exposed our weaknesses. It has given us the opportunity to fill the gaps in order to make the Indian health system fit for the future. Much advances outside of health have helped us accelerate health sector strengthening activities. “Atmanirbhat Bharat” is one of the initiatives that has provided much-needed support to the Indian health sector. The initiative aims to strengthen India’s primary, secondary and tertiary health infrastructure in many ways. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Indian manufacturers have scaled and expanded their capacities along the entire value chain. The PSA kits, Covid-19 diagnostic kits, laboratory test infrastructure, etc. have all increased significantly. Various directives have beneficially enabled the Indian health care system to develop a larger pool of health professionals.
Overall, Covid-19 was crucial for us as it made us all aware and committed to improving the country’s health infrastructure in the shortest possible time. These insights will be crucial for us to treat diseases in a holistic way.
What do you think are the best practices India should adopt from the world to build robust health infrastructure for 137 million Indians?
Healthcare in India faces several challenges including inadequate access, low insurance penetration and a growing burden of chronic diseases. The technology infusion, along with expanded infrastructure and efficiency gains through process improvements, could help improve the accessibility and affordability of healthcare.
Research and development are very important for the development of a country. The progress of science and technology depends crucially on it. No wonder that the industrialized countries spend enormous sums on research and development. In 2011, for example, global research spending was 1.77% of total GDP. However, R&D spending in India is nowhere comparable.
Also read: Health management is the order of the day
Healthcare leaders work hard to continually refine and improve their processes to improve patient care, reduce costs, and improve overall patient experience and satisfaction. Healthcare project management skills are becoming increasingly important to organizations, including the healthcare industry, as they help control costs, manage risk, and improve project outcomes. By applying project management techniques, from waterfall to agile, companies can systematically plan, organize and execute a range of tasks in order to maximize resources and achieve specific goals. Hence, India needs to adopt the program of professional health management skills from all over the world.
Improving not only supply chain processes but also other healthcare services with the technology mix will help healthcare organizations achieve long-term financial and operational efficiency and contribute to better patient safety that is possible through the use of various cutting-edge technologies.
What cutting edge technologies, especially ICT technologies, are required to create a smart, robust and responsive hospital in the country?
Unsafe situations and crises illustrate the importance of the use of new technologies and innovations in health systems. In order to build a sustainable ecosystem in the healthcare sector, it is crucial to ensure a sustainable healthcare infrastructure. There are several cutting edge technologies in existence that will have a major impact on health care outcomes when used in hospitals. In my opinion, Predictive Analytics, BI Tools, AI & Machine Learning, Automation, Decision Support Systems, Integrated Healthcare Delivery Models and Robotics can be used to create a smart, robust and responsive hospital. These and many other technologies used around the world to provide better, fast and accurate services need to be adopted in India to build a robust health infrastructure in the country.
What new technologies do you use and how do they help you to ensure first-class patient care?
The rapid pace of technological progress has brought about enormous changes in all areas of life. In the medical field, the use of mobile apps is beneficial for both doctors and patients. Collecting patient feedback is the first step in providing better patient care and experience. The Sunshine Global Hospital has such a digital feedback mechanism to understand how patients feel about the service provided. With patient feedback apps, the patient is happy to provide feedback on various aspects of the hospital. This may be related to the performance of the doctor and staff, facilities, ambience, and others.
Another important internally developed technology is the ‘Nursing Manpower Mapping Tool’. It precisely predicts the need for care depending on the type of patient mix that is available on a particular day. It helps to put the right caregiver alongside the right patients, and this improves the overall outcome. It also helps an organization to regularly plan and monitor its nursing needs. Our Happiness ICU concept is based on technology that enables critically ill intensive care patients to see and communicate with their relatives without compromising the environment and hygiene in the intensive care unit. This has a psychological impact and improves patients’ mental strength to hang around and fight disease.
Hospitals are looking for architectural updates to improve safety, patient care, and employee satisfaction while creating a friendly environment. What initiatives are you taking in this direction?
Since the Sunshine Global Hospital is NABH-accredited, we adhere to the quality indicators according to the benchmark, which is also used to measure the satisfaction of employees and patients. For patient satisfaction, we have a digital feedback system and we try to keep the benchmark by providing high quality care to patients.
We have also created the “zone system” for both Covid and non-Covid patients, which allows contamination to be limited as much as possible to improve safety. Our hospital has a total of 225 beds in which we have allocated more than 50% beds to the Covid patient, and if the number of patients increases, we can increase the number of beds if necessary due to the flexible infrastructure.
In addition, our premise has started the Covid vaccination campaign, which aims to cover a maximum number of people, where we have already administered over 3000 people. We have continuously trained staff who can recognize anaphylactic shock and take action. In the past few weeks, news and social media have been flooded with photos of Covid patients gasping as the country faces an acute medical oxygen shortage that has overwhelmed health infrastructure in most states. But based on our premise, efforts have intensified to provide sufficient oxygen through the construction of the oxygen generator system and the smooth supply of the patients.
How is the patient safety movement shaping hospital operations, technology and the supply chain? How do you reconfigure this?
Nearly 4,44,000 people die each year from preventable hospital errors. Fortunately, health care providers, caregivers, and consumers acting together can improve patient safety outcomes. Patient safety involves avoiding errors, limiting harm, and reducing the likelihood of errors through planning that promotes communication, lowers infection rates, and reduces errors.
A healthcare facility’s engineering services support patient care and help maintain a healing and safe environment and are an integral part of the hospital infrastructure. It accounts for approximately 35-40% of the capital cost of building health care facilities, and the health design requirement is that it deliver high quality patient care at the most cost effective capital and ongoing cost.
Patients expect added value in every phase of their care. There are various components of engineering services at Sunshine Global Hospital where precautions are taken to ensure high quality care and timely maintenance for patient safety. This includes colored piped medical gas and vacuum systems (PMGV), air conditioning and refrigeration systems with timely calibration, elevators with timely inspection, waste disposal system, communication system, CCTV surveillance, building management system,
When you think about ways to reduce costs, increase efficiency and integrate data into processes, three words come to mind: supply chain management. Healthcare supply chain management includes sourcing resources, managing consumables, and delivering goods and services to providers and patients. Supply chain management remains an issue across the healthcare sector, and running programs or initiatives to support transformation provides an opportunity to improve efficiency at a critical time. Health organizations help cut costs, implement smarter processes and ensure better patient care. In Sunshine Global’s hospital, the supply chain ensures the availability of drugs / products at the right time, minimizes inventory waste, maximizes patient care, coordination in all departments by minimizing human / medication errors in order to provide patients with the best possible quality of care.
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source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/india-needs-to-embrace-healthcare-management-skills-from-world-sunshine-global-hospitals-coo-dr-biren-chauhan/
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