When Senu Sam admitted his 65-year-old father to a hospital in Kerala for neuro-brain surgery, he firsthand experienced the challenges of navigating healthcare in small- and medium-sized hospitals in India. He couldn’t access any information, digital or otherwise, about the doctor treating his father and wasn’t sure if he was connected with the right doctor. “Also, I wanted to know whether the hospital had ever done similar procedures earlier. I was not getting any transparent pricing, the insurance process was completely broken, the bills were overtly priced and there wasn’t any post-surgical support,” he tells YourStory. For many middle- and lower-middle-class families, this is a daily reality. Small- and medium-sized hospitals are providers of a vast majority of India’s healthcare needs, however, many of these 10-300 bedded establishments often lack quality care due to paucity of funds. As per the Indian Medical Association, the survival of nursing homes and small hospitals is important for short- and long-term affordable care. The inability of these hospitals to dispense appropriate healthcare on time tends to drive away low- and middle-income groups, as per Sam. “Factors such as dearth of administrative and pricing transparency, skyrocketing healthcare cost, poor patient-to-hospital ratio, and paucity of quality care are the key reasons causing surgery-related fear among patients, resulting in treatment delays and poor quality of life,” he explains. He also realised that many patients are clueless about which doctor to approach or which facility to go to, and there’s no one to handhold them throughout the treatment journey. In 2021, Sam, along with Rahmathulla TM (CTO) and Joash Philipose (CPO) launched Mykare Health to alleviate the challenges facing 30-80 bedded hospitals through a patient-first approach.
Source: Yourstory
