New Delhi: At the Amrita Hospital in Faridabad, a patient’s family will no longer be asked to run pillar to post — from the OPD to the testing lab to the pharmacy — to ensure smooth treatment of their family member. Medical records, medicine prescriptions and diagnostic samples here move through automated, app-based systems.
Constructed at an estimated cost of about Rs 6,000 crore and inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 24 August, the 2,600-bed hospital aims to be a healthcare facility that makes the patient the focal point.
The hospital is currently staffed with 180 doctors and 300 nurses, manning about 500 beds and employs around 2,000 people from Faridabad and the surrounding region in Delhi-National Capital Region. Over the next few years, as the hospital reaches full capacity, it is expected to have a staff of 12,000 people.
According to an Amrita Hospital spokesperson, the Haryana government has assured that the state road transport authority will soon start regular public bus services to the hospital for the benefit of patients and others who have to visit the facility.
The initial funding for building the hospital has come from the Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM), headed by spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, or ‘Amma’ as she is known to her followers, and other donors. The MAM is also the force behind the Amrita Hospital in Kochi, Kerala.
Though operational for only about two weeks, the sprawling 130-acre campus of Amrita Hospital has been seeing a regular footfall of about 750 outpatients.
Apart from investing heavily in state-of-the-art infrastructure, the hospital also aims to change the culture of medical practice where one doctor alone makes decisions about the medication and surgery of a patient.
“We have carefully selected our faculty, but now we have to invest in creating the culture of team medicine practice,” Sanjeev Singh, Resident Medical Director, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad told ThePrint.
“Generally, as doctors, what we do is that we decide on our own whether surgery is required and then go ahead with it. But that is bad science. Science is about deciding as a group based on available information if that is the best treatment for a patient.”
With a dedicated research block within the campus, Amrita Hospital also wants to take medical research beyond just conducting clinical trials for drugs being developed outside the country.
“Medical practice does not help the society if everything is just limited to patient and doctor interaction. All our faculty will also have to be actively participating in research,” said Singh, adding that one of the challenges the facility faces is becoming self-sufficient and expanding research is one of the ways to achieve that goal.
“We cannot be dependent on the Math to run the hospital. We have to have a strong research division to attract research grants. We also have to work with industrial partners on research and develop partnerships that help us stay ahead in technological advancements.”
“The services are not free, but hospital charges are lower than industry standards. We currently charge about Rs 400 for OPD services. We want to keep healthcare affordable while providing holistic healthcare,” he added
The OPD charges at other private hospitals, by comparison, range from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,500.
The hospital, which claims to be the “largest facility” to have the capability to handle infectious diseases, is equipped with 534 smart ICU beds, each of which can be converted into isolation chambers in case of a disease outbreak.
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While a number of hospitals come with super specialty units, Amrita Hospital has designed each wing to be self-sufficient. For instance, the OPD of the gastroenterology wing is connected to the gastric surgery department and the wing has its own room where a patient can deposit their samples.
Here, each sample is given a barcode, and through its pneumatic delivery network — which it claims is one of the largest in India — is sent to a fully automated testing centre which then uploads the test results to a secure app.
Medical records of patients are then accessible to doctors on this app, which is also programmed to alert them if any patient’s test parameters cross a critical limit.
“We do not have to wait for the test results to be collected by the patient, or for the nurse to call us [to assess a situation],” said Singh.
By automating several aspects such as sample processing, the doctors aim to reduce the turnaround time for each patient. “For medical imaging, too, everything will be on the tabs. A patient need not wait for the physical films of the images to be developed for any clinical decision making,” he said.
According to Singh, Amrita is a super specialty hospital but also provides basic specialty services, like general medicine and general surgery. “Basic specialties like psychiatry, dermatology, dental, paediatrics, do not earn as much as areas like cardiology. Hospitals usually do not invest in these areas since they do not have earning potential,” he said.
The training centre at Amrita Hospital will have medical students practice on simulations and robots. The campus will also have India’s largest centre for robotics, haptic, cadaver, high-fidelity, surgical and medical simulation.
In India, most medical patients practice on real patients. “If a doctor needs to perform a knee replacement training, they should be trained to do that on cadavers. They cannot be starting on a patient — that harms the patient,” said Singh.
“If some 150 students are learning about heart sounds from a real patient, that is not appropriate. Patient dignity and privacy gets compromised,” he asserted.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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