Ensuring Cost Efficiencies In Capital Intensive Departments

Maintaining cost efficiencies within capital intensive department is a must for any hospital to achieve economies of scale.

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The panel discussion on 'Ensuring cost efficiencies within capital intensive units' brought to light strategies that facilitate hospitals to make capital intensive departments such as radiology, OTs, ICUs, pathologies etc., highly productive while maintaining highest quality standards.

The panel comprised, Dr Bhavin Jankharia, Partner and Consultant at Picture (moderator), Dr Vidur Mahajan, Executive Director, Mahajan Imaging; Dr Biren Chauhan, Group Centre Head, Sunshine Global Hospitals and Dr Sandeep Chatrath, Regional CEO, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana, Apollo Hospitals.

Dr Jankharia fabricated this discussion into a highly interactive session, wherein both panellists and audience shared their experiences, challenges and solutions that can bring in economies of scale to hospitals while doing ethical business and ensuring the best of healthcare services to their patients.

He began the discussion by talking about a Bob Dylan song, For the times, they are a changin.. and said that in times where the healthcare sector is changing with a major role of technology to drive diagnostics, it is important for the administrator, radiologists and other professional associated with clinical diagnostics be ready to adapt to this change. On that note, he presented a slide that highlighted tall points for the session that revolved around capex, deferring costs at purchase, Jugaad, commoditisation value, profitability, high capex and healthcare outcomes.

Dr Jankharia first asked Dr Mahajan to name few radiology equipment that consume the highest capex margins. Dr Mahajan replied, “MRI and PetCT are one of the highest capex consuming equipment. Apollo Delhi has an MRI worth Rs 35 crores. CT and X-rays are of a diverse nature. One can get a CT for less than a crore and you can get a CT for million and a half dollar. Then comes X-ray machine, mammography, ultrasound etc.”