New-age hospital services to drive a healthy healthcare ecosystem

In the last 3 years, the healthcare ecosystem has evolved dramatically, especially in hospitals. We can now analyze the entire pandemic situation and clearly see how it impacted hospitals as much as it has the world, across all spectrums of society, and business. Now that the situation is almost back to normal, the awareness, expectation, and demand for healthcare that was previously obstructed by Covid-associated constraints have suddenly increased. The focus has also shifted sharply to safe, accessible, and quality healthcare services.

For larger cities, like Pune, which are so widely spread out, traffic and travel times play a major deciding factor in making healthcare choices. People tend to look for hospitals that provide best-in-class services at a closer distance and as a micro-market for comprehensive care, including availability of very specific or niche services, such as a transplant or cancer surgery.

The newly launched hospital in Baner, west Pune, is a greenfield project, which is the second hospital in Pune and the 28th unit for Manipal Hospitals network. It is a 250-bedded, quaternary care hospital, fully equipped with the latest technologies required for any type of transplant or radiation therapy. While we already have a 100-bedded tertiary care hospital in Pune east, which runs with high frequency already, this new hospital completes the complement and offers a state-of-the-art infrastructure with 7 OTs, 60-plus ICU beds with a dedicated transplant ICU, a BMT unit, a cath lab, and endoscopy suites and a comprehensive cancer care unit. From catering to the most basic health checks to the most complex surgical procedures, the hospital also provides home care services and remote monitoring, it has the complete spectrum of services that metro city hospitals provide.

The key differentiator of this greenfield hospital project is the attention to details in the design and plan of the hospital, which is extremely patient- and clinician-friendly. Patient flow and department planning smoothly integrates the clinical functionality with patient-friendly and safety features. Medical equipment and technology is seamlessly integrated into the infrastructure and well supported by wireless IT-based HIS. Web-based appointment booking and billing, which is now standard in most businesses in the post-Covid digitized era, is also a basic feature in the hospital. Online prescriptions and online orders for all patient tests are just the norm of how physicians function routinely, ensuring safety and accuracy across the continuum of care. This is applicable to both outpatient and inpatient orders. Adoption of technology and IT has been a challenge that has been addressed through intensive training and some good features like favorites, dictation options, etc. Timely sourcing of quality medical equipment and devices in the disrupted global supply chain system was also a challenge addressed effectively by the support of the Manipal Health system’s strong supply chain team and network.

At the core of this hospital is of course its clinical team and the exclusive institutional practice model of full-time dedicated consultants that ensures the highest standard of care is consistently provided by a high-performing and well-tuned clinical team. This exclusive committed panel of consultants is a time-tested model that is slowly and surely making a comeback in many healthcare markets that will go a long way in serving the medical profession and the public well.

Ensuring availability of preventive to quaternary level care, all under one roof while also ensuring compassionate, personalized care, is something that only a mid-size 250 hospital can rightly balance and will be the ask from all hospital experiences in this age and ahead. The new-age hospital will need to have both the depth and the breadth of services while ensuring rational utilization of all basic and premium resources by clinicians and administrators in a need-based, trustworthy, and transparent manner.

Being able to provide a complete spectrum of healthcare services and being able to flex up and down this spectrum will be key to how well hospitals and the healthcare industry adapt and respond to the numerous challenges that lie ahead, much like waves that through Covid pandemic taught us.