New-age healthcare firms give small hospitals a smart solution

New age companies that leverage technologies have disrupted every industry with profound business models and strategies, and healthcare sector is no exception.

Small and medium-sized hospitals, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas, have been longing to emulate big and corporate hospitals in terms of emergency healthcare delivery systems and also grow their revenues. Absence of quality ICU services have resulted in hundreds of such hospitals stagnating.

But the much-awaited disruption appears to be happening for these now. New age healthcare players like CIPACA (P) Ltd, an organisation that specialises in setting up and managing ICUs, help small players to achieve what was impossible for them earlier.

At least a dozen medium-and-small-sized hospitals in small town and rural areas have now turned smart to offer top class emergency & ICU services, while boosting their revenues significantly, thanks to on-boarding of CIPACA’s ICU model, which combines standardised ICU team work flows, financial sharing models and tele-medicine platforms.

Revenue leakage stopped

“Earlier, without a proper ICU and trained staff, these hospitals, where we manage ICU operations now, had to lose revenue by referring to big hospitals. Now, we have helped them to arrest the leakage of revenues,” said Raja Amarnath, Founder of CIPACA.

The leakage of revenue in those small and medium hospitals due to non-availability of ICU was estimated in the range of 25-50 per cent of their normal revenue.

And the big part of this success story is the impact on the society. Now, thousands of people in those regions don’t have rush to city hospitals for emergency care and high risk treatments.

Sree Kumaran Multispeciality Hospital at Oddanchataram in southern Tamil Nadu, is a popular name now in that region as this 40-bedded hospital can now offer emergency services to more than 2 lakh people in that area. It could save more than 2,000 critically ill patients in the last two years, while witnessing a surge in revenue.

Owners of many such hospitals, which now have ICUs by CIPACA, pointed out that they have seen tangible outcomes - their scope of services has been widened, while overall revenue has started moving northwards as utilisation levels of high-end medical equipment improved a lot due to emergency care.

MK Anand, Strategic Business Advisor-MSMEs, See Change Consulting points out that healthcare delivery segment has been witnessing many disruptions and companies like CIPACA have worked out a viable business model using powerful technologies to achieve scale and revenue growth by the medium-and-small sized hospitals.

The success of new age firms in improving healthcare delivery in hinterlands may supplement government’s efforts to multiply healthcare delivery systems across the country.