The demand for the Healthcare service is increasing at a rapid pace, thereby also fuelling the market growth. Some of the key factors that are responsible for this escalation are increased number of ageing population, advancements in medicine & medical technology, and rising awareness among masses for value-based care. As a result of this, variuos small and mid-sized Hospitals have mushroomed in every nook and corner of the city. However, even though we have so many healthcare providers offering health to the community but they lack professionalism. Hereby, the importance of highly skilled and experienced consultants are playing a significant role by providing valuable advice to hospital owners and practitioners to cease any hindrance in the growth and productivity of the hospital system.
India-based, Healthcare Consulting Services (HCS) is one of innovative players established to reform and better serve the hospitals as well as to standardize the healthcare system. The company’s mission is to help manage all the unprofessionally run hospitals with best management practices and provide world-class medicine, treatment, & service to the local population.
Having 18+ years of experience in the major multi-specialty hospitals & multinational companies, the Founder, CEO, & Managing Partner of HCS, Amit Sontakke is helping hospitals to navigate their work more efficiently and improve their business growth effectively. Under his leadership, the company has received much recognition.
Inspiration that led to the Foundation of HCS
Being a hospital & healthcare professional, Amit handpicked this industry because of the influence he had in his personal and professional life. The competent leader holds a master’s degree in Hospital Administration from Institute of Management Studies (IMS), Indore. He has also completed “Advanced Senior Management Program” from IIM Calcutta and a certification course in “Sustaining & Managing Hospital Growth” from IIM Bangalore.
A Multifaceted Company Managing Hospital Growth
Headquartered in Mumbai, HCS is a healthcare advisory & consulting firm in the field of healthcare & hospital management, rendering end to end services to hospitals and healthcare institutions with their marketing strategies and assisting hospitals with operations management. The company’s tagline ‘Management advisory that help manage your hospital growth’ is the drive behind maintaining its standard to deliver whatever is being promised to the clients. The upmost consulting firm was built on the core values of Commitment, Service Delivery, Ethics, Management Integrity, and Accessible, Affordable & Available Services that reflects its mission and vision. To deliver world-class services, the company formulates and implements the right strategies for each client’s unique challenges and requirements.
Comprehensive Spectrum of Services
For hospitals and healthcare institutions, HCS acts as a pillar of growth and helps them to sustain their available resources. It does this by offering consulting services in the following key focused areas such as operations management, marketing management, human resource management, sales management, nursing administration, clinical management, and support services.
Apart from this, it also helps in statutory compliance, quality management, and project management for streamlining the hospital. Since its inception, HCS is committed towards preparing hospitals to engage in future challenges and accordingly, renders end-to-end solutions like establishment of clinical and non-clinical departments, creating a pool of talent, effective & competent manpower planning, medical equipment planning, quality benchmarking, designing policies & protocols, HIS, and IT (Hardware & Software) implementation.
Overcoming Challenges to Gain Valuable Lessons
As the Founder of a leading consulting firm, Amit has gone through numerous twists and turns to take HCS where it is positioned today. According to him, the key issues are attaining goals and dealing with promoters. Usually, after conducting GAP analysis of the project, the versatile leader decides the scope of work and believes in adhering to it. He also believes in sharing a common vision with the entire team so that they can attain the predefined goal together.
Most of the promoters are home grown doctors and do not have formal exposure to business management. Therefore, they require lot of explanations to understand how to manage the business, which is quite difficult and tedious task. From these trials and tribulations, the versatile leader has learned three valuable lessons. First, carry out thorough GAP analysis which will help you further define your scope of work and problem at a stretch. Second, choose your clients and employees carefully. Last, be realistic in setting the timeline for delivery and make that respect your team and partner.
Growth of Consulting firms in the APAC region
While answering the question as to what makes the APAC region one of the fastest growing consulting sectors in the world, Amit states, “In Asia Pacific, we have maximum of the developing countries, hence there are smaller and larger growth areas.” For example, India’s maximum population still resides in rural and remote locations, especially the Tier II & Tier III cities. Over the last few decades, the standard of living of people has risen as they are now aspiring to buy cars and those on cycle, to purchase scooter or moped vehicles. Furthermore, he believes that we have seen internet revolution coupled with mobile penetration and now each and every individual is exposed to news, current affairs, and what is happening in other parts of the world. In all, they are able to analyse what is best for them in their limited budget. These aforesaid scenarios are therefore fuelling the growth of consulting sectors in the APAC region also.
Therefore there is need to study the ever evolving disease pattern, that is moving from Communicable to Non Communicable Disease (NCD’s). In other aspect, migration of the population from rural to urban creating a new sub category called urban poor.
We also have to focus on Intra and Inter medical tourism, due to poor health care facility in some countries in Asia pacific and also within the state and villages.
One more area of consulting is, the health of aging population and how it needs to be addressed, who will fund it and from where we can provide or extend such a help.
How can we cater to such a large disease population, when inflation is rising, and cost of health is shooting or sky rocketing, how can we provide low cost health model.
Another aspect of consulting in APAC is how can one country’s health technology, skills be shared and utilised by another.
We need to understand the need of Informational Technology, Telemedicine and AI in the Hospitals & Healthcare.
How can our hospitals be more Green and enviornmental friendly ?
How can we encourage frugal innovation and disruptive models?