Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, In Service for Sight

Source:www.aravind.org

Quality of Service at Main hospital

Sequential Series of evaluations
Vision Recording by ophthalmic assistants
Preliminary eye examination by eye doctor

Testing for ocular tension and tear-duct function

Refraction Tests Final examination by senior medical officer

 Smooth , steady , uninterrupted surgical process. Stress on maximum utilization of resources-with less that 1% of ophthalmic manpower, accounts for 5% of ophthalmic surgeries nationwide. The hospitals have well-equipped specialty clinics with comprehensive support facilities. Monitoring adverse events during and following surgery The Clinical Quality Assessment provides a comparison of adverse events among Aravind patients (both during surgery and in the 48 hours following surgery) to patients in the United Kingdom, showing that complication rates among Aravind patients are slightly lower than those among U.K. patients. Monitoring vision improvement

Quality of service at free hospitals

The outpatient facilities were not as organized as in the main hospital. Similar sequence of evaluations Lesser support staff Almost all surgeries were of intracapsular type(ICCE) More crowded and cramped operating theatres. Big rooms accommodating 20-30 patients :no beds.

Current services offered

Hospital Services Community Outreach Education & Training Aravind Medical Research Foundation Research LAICO - Consultancy and Capacity Building Aurolab - Ophthalmic Supplies Eye Bank Source: http://www.aravind.org/

Role of Support Staff

 Patient counselors address patients fears as Aravind lost out on many potential patients because of fear of surgery. Managing eye camps, initial eye tests

The Medical Records Department forms the integral part of the patient care which comprises the Reception Counter, Outpatient registration service, Billing service and, Administration & Discharge Services
Managing follow up of patients who had surgery Assisting specialty clinics in various laboratories

Support Staff contributes to the Service Profit Chain

Internal Service Quality: Thulasi mentioned that the support staff was recruited and trained from scratch by them. Satisfied and productive service employees: hardworking employees who view their work as a spiritual experience. Greater service value: Satisfaction of employees resulted in successful implementation of services. Satisfied and loyal customers: Successful surgeries and supportive staff would result in more and more people coming to Aravind Healthy Growth: Substantial increase in number of patients visiting aravind

Weaknesses in the Aravinds Model

The paid patients are growing at a slower rate than the free patients which means that the average cost per patient is increasing The utilization rate of the Tirunelveli and at the Theni units is low causing higher overhead per patient Almost entirely family run-limited growth due to constraint of good managers Lower salaries as compared to the other private hospitals while it had longer and more strenuous working hours compared to the rest. This is a concern since they may not be able to retain the best talent with them. The eye camps had to be located near the 4 cities where the hospitals were, this reduced the scalability.

60000

50000

40000

30000

Free Patients Paying Patients

20000

10000

0 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91