In Conversation With Sugandh Ahluwalia, Chief Strategy Officer, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC), Delhi.
1) Your strategies and performance measurement mechanism has undoubtedly elevated Indian Spinal Injuries Centre's name. Please shed some light on how these strategies helped ISIC in becoming a brand in the healthcare industry.
With almost three-decades of experience in healthcare industry, we are constantly involved in strategic planning, while upgrading performance measurement mechanism from time to time. Within a short span of our establishment, we created niche and a monopoly in spine-related treatments. Once other hospitals started coming up, we started having competition. So, like other hospitals, we had to devise strategies and adopt performance measurement systems. ISIC was one of the first hospitals that started the balance score card for performance measurement, which takes into consideration all patient experience parameters and service parameters. This set up has helped ISIC when it comes to monitoring quality.
2) Healthcare delivery has gone through a metamorphosis during COVID-19 pandemic. Have you implemented any new strategy to provide non-stop healthcare delivery to the needy people?
A)The pandemic changed the nature of business in healthcare industry, and we had also our share of challenges at this time which helped us in evolving stronger than ever. Like other hospitals, we also struggled in the initial phase of COVID in terms of patient care. However, to the best of our abilities, we continued doing surgeries even in peak COVID time and devised telemedicine and tele-rehab. We also came up with some new concepts during this time in terms of medical care. Some of our delivery lines like orthopedics now has a new concept called PREMS, which refers to monitoring patient experience outcomes and PROMS -- Patient Related Outcome Measures.
3) As a woman Chief Strategy Officer, were there any challenges that you had to come across?
A) I faced some challenges initially as the role involves creative thinking and cultivating key business relationships. In terms of gender equality, ISIC has a very good mix of female leaders as well as male leaders, so there has never been a problem in that regard. I have always taken inspiration from my father and former ISIC Chairman Major HPS Ahluwalia and my mother, Mrs. Bholi Ahluwalia who has been my pillar of strength. My mother has always supported me and been a guiding light, not only in personal life but professional life as well. Now we expect my mother to be the guiding force and carry forward the legacy left behind my father.
4) Any tips on how Indian healthcare industry can flourish globally? Do you think there's a gap that is stopping our healthcare industry in booming in the world?
A)Both public and private sectors need to work together to improve India’s healthcare system. Today, the market is very competitive andunethical as well in terms of referral and sharing data or knowledge. If we set a platform, where hospitals can share data with each other, then the health industry will boom as we will be learning from each other. So, there should be more collaborations, more technical know-how, exchanges, and platforms where people get to share their experiences and their outcome measures with each other. Basically, the medical knowledge should be shared with each other. The data should be shared, and more focus should be given towards data collection.
Fact finding should be encouraged rather than faultfinding.We should encourage people to come forward with incidents and grievances because that will help the hospital become better or any healthcare facility become better. Ultimately, there should be data sharing, collection, and data analysis among hospitals where they can learn from each other. So that is one major gap that needs to be breached.
National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) has given a very good push towards future planning, so the mindset towards the healthcare industry has also changed. Contingency plans, safety measures are all very essential components that make a strategic plan in healthcare sector.
5) Today Indian Spinal Injuries Centre is renowned for its prolific work and spinal treatments. What vision do you have for the future of ISIC?
A) ISIC has been established as a spine orthopedics brand.Now, we are looking to provide more facilities and make our outreach wider as we want to go back to providing monopoly in terms of more specialized and customized specialties with the help of latest technology. We were amongst the first hospitals that got spinal robotics and we want to be people’s first choice in spine andorthopedics treatment.We also want to develop some other areas that makes this hospital more accessible to the masses. At least in our surrounding radius, we should be the first choice.
We want to continue doing something our target market wants-- we should be able to cater to them. We want to continue being renowned in spine treatment and evolve in this area, but we will always be a super specialty and not multispecialty.
