Emerging healthcare trends

The year 2021 has been quite a challenging year for healthcare sector. Regulators imposed rigorous policy interventions, such as a price cap for medical devices and restrictions on rates for Covid patients, which created some headwinds for the industry. Some private healthcare organizations also struggled to stay afloat as they tried to strike a balance between cost and profit. Covid-19 is expected to spark long-term improvements in attitudes regarding personal health and cleanliness, health insurance, fitness, and nutrition, as well as health monitoring and medical examinations.

In terms of revenue and employment, healthcare has become one of the largest sectors of the Indian economy. The healthcare industry is booming, thanks to government and private-sector investments in coverage and quality. An ageing population, a growing middle class, and an increasing proportion of lifestyle diseases are all driving the rise of the Indian healthcare market. Furthermore, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare intends to increase its healthcare budget to 3 percent of GDP by 2025.

New developments
Franchise model. In India, the franchise model in the healthcare industry is still limited in comparison to other industries. SOCE (Shalby Orthopedic Centre of Excellence) is a chance for new and aspiring orthopedists from all over the country to learn from Shalby Hospitals’ expertise. This would be India’s first chain of dedicated orthopedic centers, using the brand name that Shalby has earned in orthopedics over the years.

Franchisee owned, franchisee operated. The franchisee will be responsible for establishing the franchise in accordance with Shalby’s requirements, as well as running the operations in accordance with Shalby’s protocols.

Franchisee owned, Shalby operated. The franchisee will be in charge of constructing the franchise according to Shalby’s specifications, while Shalby will run and manage the center on a revenue-sharing basis.

Short-stay surgery. Our focus shall be to project short-stay surgery for patients. The main purpose of short-stay surgery is to improve the quality of patient care along with reducing the hospital stays. A patient experiences minimal pain, is discharged as soon as possible, and recovers within a day or two of the surgery. Because most short-stay surgeries are minimally invasive, there is less damage to surrounding tissues, less inflammation, less blood loss, and faster recovery.

Cloud-based HR software. We are pleased to introduce our new HRMS software which has been named as My SHALBY. This is a cloud based human resource management system (HRMS) that will replace our existing HRMS, covering the entire gamut of our human resources including employees, consultants, medical officers and patient care officers.

It will also allow us to improve the user experience for both prospective candidates and employees when it comes to HR processes, such as interviewing, onboarding, training, leave and attendance management, payroll management, employee help desk, performance management, and exit management, among others.

Our employees will have simple access to their HRMS using the MySHALBY mobile application. The application is also supported by collaboration tools like Jinie (a chat bot based on AI) and Zippy (a messenger).

Educational arm. Shalby Academy aims to continuously improve the quality of healthcare delivery in India by providing healthcare professionals with subsidized courses and free practical training. We collaborate with the National Council of Paramedical Education in Delhi, and other premier healthcare educational institutes, to enhance the abilities and expertise of our internal staff and external students. Majority of the students trained in the academy shall be absorbed in our hospitals only, and hence hospitals of our group are not subject to a talent shortage. Our mission is to cultivate the best people in the business and to build a capable workforce to support the healthcare industry.

The author is COO – Surat Cluster, Shalby Hospitals.