At a time when medical care is beginning to be beyond the reach of many a patient, a development in the medical field may be a small solution. Ambulatory Surgery.
Ambulatory surgery, pioneered in the US often refers to day surgeries. Many of them open early in the morning and close in the evening just like any office would. While this model can help cut costs to an extent, it is expected to cut down the number of post-surgery infections.
Ambulatory or short stay surgeries are procedures that take 24-72 hours from admission to patient discharge. In 90 per cent of the cases, the patient goes home within 24 hours of the surgery.
Nova Medical Centers, a standalone Ambulatory Surgery Group, has charted out plans for setting up 25 centres across India and West Asia by March 2013 from the current 5. For this expansion, it has charted out a Rs 500 crore investment plan. The chain doesn’t intend to go in for any debt.
Nova develops, owns, acquires and operates ambulatory service centres in partnership with surgeons across India. According to the company website, it was was floated by New York-based private investment company GTI Group LLC and Dr Mahesh Reddy, who is presently the executive director of Nova Medical Centers. NEA, which has expertise in the healthcare sector, has also invested in it.
According to Suresh Soni, chairman, Nova Medical Centers Pvt Ltd, “The model provides a cost advantage to the patients where the cost of surgery is 25-30 per cent below the rates charged by the corporate hospitals.” Nova does some 130 types as ambulatory procedures as of now.
They do not have beds. They only have recovery beds. A lot of the business of hospitals have moved into such facilities.
“The insurance companies now waive the 24-hour hospitalisation norm in most of procedures at Nova as they have begun to understand the cost advantage of having an ambulatory procedure,” said Dr M G Bhat, Medical Director, Nova Medical Centers.