Quality Care is the Key
We strongly believe in teaching the community in proper preventive education, so we can all be a healthy nation, says Dr Kamal Kumar Dutta, Founder Chairman and Managing Director, Ruby General Hospital
Dr Kamal Kumar Dutta,
Founder Chairman and Managing Director, Ruby General Hospital
Please comment on healthcare market in India vis-a-vis the global market
I am a non-resident Indian doctor based in the United States. We are still in our early stages. Healthcare is low in our priority as a nation. We spend less than one percent of our GDP on healthcare expenditure compared to 5–15 percent in most nations. At present we have inadequate healthcare facilities and limited personnel to take care of more than a billion people. We have to make healthcare and healthcare education our top priority.
Please tell us about your current operations in India and your expansion plans.
Ruby General Hospital is the first NRI hospital in Eastern India. We are a complete 300 bed multi- specialty hospital, winning the Healthcare Achiever’s Award for the best multispecialty hospital in Kolkata for 2014. We are opening a cancer center with two state-of-the-art linear accelerators and 200 cancer beds. We are also in the process of procuring some satellite hospitals.
What are your views on the price sensitivity of the Indian market, and how does your hospital counter this problem?
This is our biggest challenge in reducing costs. We are better in this than most private hospitals. We have a multi-specialty approach to patient care with early testing, which provides early diagnosis and vigorous use of generic medications, which helps reduce our treatment costs. Also, being a doctor with my professional knowledge and constant oversight of costs control, helps in the process. We are obsessed with infection control and want to get the patients out of the hospital as soon as possible.
What are your views on government regulation or any other challenges faced while operating in the Indian market?
Government regulations should be less cumbersome and custom duties on life saving equipment should be removed completely. Medical equipment should have very low customs duties because the ultimate payment of this is done by the patients. They should not be part of the revenue generation of the government.
Please comment on emerging trends and new technologies.
Medicine is evolving and the most important emerging trend is prevention, which is the best cure. This is the only way we can combat the escalating healthcare costs. We must have evidence based treatment, which is done throughout the world. We also have to give importance to annual health checkups, routine cancer screening such as mammograms, pap smears, and colonoscopies. We have to give proper vaccinations, fight obesity, and combat smoking. Then only can we be a healthy country.
What are your hospital’s offerings?
We believe in quality care and constant monitoring of our patient care services. We regularly do Patient Satisfaction Surveys and our goal is to reach 98 percent satisfaction. We are a complete multi-specialty hospital with a level one trauma centre and a complete range of medical and surgical services. We do from primary angioplasty, paediatric cardiac surgery, and interventional radiology. We have a large nursing school, critical care fellowships affiliated with New Jersey Medical School and our heavily invested in research and education with American Medical Schools and pharmaceutical organizations.
uld_count:
Cookie not set
Like
Dislike
Value 1: 0
Value 2: 10
