shubhealth-blog

[shubhealth-blog]

Shubhealth Provides Information and Packages prices for various surgeries, treatment, Health Checkup and medical procedures in all over India.

Hospitals have long been a noble sector with most of them working under not for profit basis but off late we have seen hospitalization charges are crossing all the bars making healthcare unaffordable. Before privatization most of the healthcare Industry was run by the government establishments or big corporates were funding as a part of their social responsibility. As per few of the studies it is estimated that medical interventions such as dental science and trepanation (Burr hole) was started to be practised around 7000BC in the Indian sub-continent

So what exactly happened in India that from majority of Government run hospital the need arise to have a private healthcare system. The first private hospital was founded in the year 1983 by Dr Prathap C Reddy, founder of Apollo Hospitals.  

Today most of us criticize private hospitalization charges making business, we constantly read articles about medical bill in India on rise, but the very need of Private hospitals was due to the inefficiencies in government run healthcare facilities and also the rise of middle class people in India. With increase in employment opportunities and more income people started to demand for a better infrastructure and care facilities and hence the Private or like what we say in our general practice Corporate hospitals.

If we introspect we can see why there is only handful country wide big hospital chains are present till today. Even we have so many big corporates & Industries still no one wishes to enter this business.        

Challenges in Healthcare business

In India healthcare industry is one of the most highly guarded sectors with numerous restrictions. This industry has also faced the brunt of being associated with only lower and middle class and as a carrier of political agenda. Though if we see it has done more harm than favour in the long run.

To start a hospital the operator has to go through numerous approvals and red-tapiesm, and once they get the order they have to comply with innumerable rules and regulations for functioning. Any hospital is not allowed to publicise its services, they are not allowed to promote their doctors in open forum even if they have the best doctors in the country. Unlike other industries hospitals cannot promote/ sponsor any other products of any other company or brand. A series of audits are done annually, biannually. A few of the licenses required are

·         Blood Bank, Narcotics, X-Ray, Pharmacy, Bio medical waste, PNDT, MTP etc.  

Hospital chains are finding it constantly difficult to continue operations with such heavy restrictions. With recent restrictions on pricing of services in hospitals mergers & takeovers have become a regular thing in healthcare sector. Many of the smaller hospitals groups have either shut shops or are forced to merge themselves with bigger groups to continue their operations. It is estimated that on an average 70-80 lakhs is the per bed cost for making any greenfield hospital operational and it usually takes around 3-4 years for any hospital to breakeven.

The government and its initiatives are like double edged sword for the hospital sector. At one end they are capping the charge for services rendered and at the same time they are also capping the price of the drugs making it all the more difficult to operate.

Covid -19 Pandemic another blow to the already bleeding sector    

With recent Covid-19 situation when the whole world was thinking that it will be boom for healthcare sector, it was actually one of the most difficult times hospitals are facing, and most of the hospitals have got their revenues reduced by around 25-30% and occupancy declined to 40% of usual. For the other industries the lockdown meant complete shut of business, but hospitals had to keep themselves open, with 80% of the staff working full time at the hospital. Moreover with PPE kit and sanitisation the cost of running went up by 15% and with government banning all elective surgeries which accounts to almost 61% of total surgeries done.

Hospitals are also to be blamed

Yes despite all what have been written and told, there is lacking from healthcare side as well. It would not be wrong to say that private healthcare which was once created to cater the upcoming middle class has actually made it unaffordable for them. All big corporate are only focusing on the top 5-8% of upper middle class, ignoring the middle and lower middle which constitutes more than 50% of our total country’s population.

With most of the hospitals in fight to make the best looking infrastructure and more than needed high end technology has in turn made the total cost to a patient very high to be affordable. For any given hospital 50-55% of its total cost is direct cost , rest all are indirect cost, created due to layered operational culture , too many bosses, redundant cost like high cost marketing, lavish off-sites.no operational efficiency and legacy of non- transparency.

Hospitals have now started taking undue advantage of patients and charging them for all and everything. The whole premise of layman not able to understand the medical part and fear of losing loved ones, many hospitals are using this to their advantage. Many hospitals bills patients based on their financial status.

Bringing Transparency in healthcare

How good it would be if there is someone who understands the medical things and can help guide the patient and the family about which is the best hospital to get treated, any recommendations about doctors.

Billing transparency is one such thing which makes the whole process tedious & fearsome about visiting a hospital. A billing calculator or estimator tool has thousands of records for patients based on previous patient bills collected from wither patient or from online research

This high end billing estimator tool can come handy for patients once they have decided to get the surgery done, but like usual are sceptical about what and how much will they end up paying. Using various options these estimator tools helps to give you a broad range, based on pre-selected criteria what was the average bill for patients who have gone to any of the corporate hospitals in that city. A more advanced version can help the patient even know that how much would be the total medicine cost , how many days do the patient has to stay in the hospital, of the total amount he will pay how much pertains to the room rent, what is being charged to him for the actual procedure cost, how much is the doctor being paid for that procedure are there any specific things which are not part of the Package and has to be paid separately or anything specific to Insurance if they do not reimburse based on past history.        

If a person is aware he is more confident, he can get his finances sorted before he gets the surgery done and his family behind him won’t have to get through the hassle of taking by surprise related to medical bill. For many of elective surgeries people can not only plan based on availability of time and comfort but also based on by when they will be able to arrange the funds expected.      

With more transparency hospitals will be able to cater to much broader category of patients and can earn the lost trust as well. It is usually not possible for one hospital group to have this sort of data, hence outsource or 3rd party website who has access to large patient records by way of research shall be able the right one’s to give accurate information

Though we may find a few websites who promises to help patients with estimates but most of them are not very accurate due to limited information they have.

“We wish you never need us!!  If you do we will be with you!!!    “