Healthcare For Non Healthcare People Is Very Important: Dr Sangeeta Reddy

Do you think that the non medical staff in the hospitals get their due credit for the work they do?

I think overall as a sector or an industry people are beginning to realise the value of the support team. But let me you know, from the very beginning, Apollo has always had a commitment towards the non doctors. Our logo itself is a nurse. Our chairman has said that my maintenance engineer is as important as my cardio plastic surgeon. And I actually coined the phraseology called the unsung heroes of medicine. Our Food Services team, our backend staff, all of them are as critical in the overall delivery of results and good outcomes for patients. And therefore, the Apollo family, as we think of them, are a holistic, cohesive team working around the patient. But do they get as much credit for that I believe as a sector, we still have a lot more to do.

Do you think that the industry is doing enough to upskill the non medical staff and their infrastructure?

I think every intelligent forward looking hospital system will do it and so whether it's technology upgradation or something else, we actually did a tie up with NASSCOM. NASSCOM is training almost 800 of our people in digital skills. So there's the cross functional training because you know, to do the same thing, whether it's a receptionist or front office to do the same thing for 30-40 years, which is, you know, what a career is, is unfair. So cross functional training. So they learn new things, they move into new departments, they move up different career ladder.

Healthcare for non healthcare people is also a very important thing, because I think we bring in people from different sectors, but they need to understand that if you're having a gastroscopy and you have to be on an empty stomach and if someone has an MI, time is of the essence. So the aspects of learning medicine and important elements of medical care, and its role in the overall ability to fulfil your task. But then talent, people management, conflict resolution, handling difficult customers, empathy, sensitivity, listening skills, there's so many and it's all part of our learning and l&d process.

We almost 25 years ago put in the policy that we need to do a minimum of 52 training hours even for non medical people as well, many of them do more than 50. And more. In fact, most of them do more than 50. But our l&d department is working on, you know, technology. So we use med vasty and med skills, we use sim labs, in the simulation lab, people learn, rather than having to learn on a medical patient. Technology has helped us a lot in not just bringing together the organisation, but delivering high quality, effective learning in a digital environment.

What are the key areas that you think non medical staff need training in the most so that we can create efficiencies in healthcare delivery? And also does their work contribute towards the actual outcome of medical services?

Let me take the last one first and undoubtedly their role is significant in the outcome as well. It's not just in the overall experience, how well have you been received? How well were you directed? How efficiently is your medical process done? Is your paperwork right? Is it minimal, etc., there is a lot of work. But like I was alluding to earlier, the support system is what enables the doctors and the medical teams to deliver that ultimate outcome. So not only their role is critical. What is critical for an organisation is an appreciation that everybody has an important role.

But in terms of what kind of skills they need, I think the first one is really the whole thing of patient centricity. Because very often staff get commands from all directions from say doctors or senior nurses or senior managers. So they begin to think that their job is to listen to those bosses. But in a hospital, the biggest learning is patient centricity that the customer is the boss. Besides that, you know, digital skills are important, people management, conflict resolution, listening skills, situation handling, because, you know, you'll see all kinds of situations and a healthcare environment, the ability to pacify. So it's a series of steps. And your brain has to think on those lines and the system has to support you to do this kind of work. 

How do you ensure that the non medical staff knows their role and the importance of it?

Simon Sinek says it's not what you do? its Why do you do it? So when you tell them, say in our call centre? Yes, we told the team. So day one, we told them, tell us someone who you know you love the most, and bring us a picture. And then they put it in their workstations. And then we tell them, imagine if that person was on the other end of the phone line, talk to every call as if they were your family members. So it's some of these, you know, and of course, that continuous sensitisation that the person who's coming to you and shouted because they didn't get a parking space. And a high degree of empathy is one of the most important things which can only come by going on talking, telling them, sharing stories, and celebrating when customers say they were good. And we pass that message back. Because I think the most powerful thing in the world is not, you know, the motivator is it's not money. It's not position, it's not power. It's that human touch and appreciation. 

How can an institution like a hospital work on creating a culture where joy and happiness amongst its workforces can be created without actually creating a very dichotomy with the sensitivity with which they need to appear in front of their patients?

One of the things that over the last three years that we began doing, we were doing it earlier, but now it's become like a mandate that every employee and their wife free of cost will have a health checkup. Every day, we are hearing like the day before yesterday, one of our managers came, Ma'am, I have to tell you, my wife came in for the checkup. We expected nothing, we found a small lump in her breast. She had a lumpectomy, she's had seven sessions of radiation, she's completely fine. We are so thankful that we caught it at stage one. Every day somebody has a stent, somebody has the power of telling them that first we care for you. That's why we are forcing you to have this health checkup.

There's the physical well being but there's the emotional well being as well, we have a psychologist that they can call because the stress of a healthcare environment is not easy. Then I spoke to earlier about the structure programs of rewards of incentives of WoW champions, everyone, anyone who delivers Wow, the world champions, superheroes at work, things like this is celebrating, then we have a platform to showcase it because like we said recognition is very, very important

Is there a fear of losing your workforce to the competition's once they are trained? And would it actually work as a or or would it work like a retention strategy?

I think, see, luckily, our attrition and we have attrition. What we saw very early in the day is a lot of our attrition used to go abroad. And it used to bother us and we our nursing director would say keep their certificates back and things like that. And then you know, we kind of said that if you're losing them to something that you cannot deliver for them, then you should bless them and let them go. so if they're going at a much higher salary, if they're going for higher position, so we lose doctors who are part of the team or a junior in the team, somebody else offers them head of department, they're gonna go, you lose a nurse to the Middle East, they are going to get five times their salary.

We work towards keeping our attrition as low as possible. And we are among the lowest in the industry, whether it's you know, across the board, and we will continue to do so because there's a certain sense of belonging to culture, many of our not just our leaders, but many of our team members have retired after 30 or 40 years that their kids want to work at Apollo? So we have that fairly strong culture.

But one of the things I will say, separate from this question, is that we as a country need to figure out how we can pay healthcare workers. The rates of CGHS and the insurance reimbursement and the way people are left now this new thing on GST, people are squeezing the healthcare sector, the margins are getting smaller, and we're not able to pay the way the other industries are paying. And therefore, I think the country must realise that healthcare is important, and must enable higher prices, so that we can pay our people even more. And this is something our chairman is also very passionate about. We think it's critical to do that. And there is a global workforce shortage. 17 million is the global workforce shortage. India is the place that every country is looking at to poach healthcare resources. So we better find a way to pay our people more and retain them, otherwise, we ourselves will have a healthcare crisis.

(Watch The Full Interview Here: https://youtu.be/H56zNN7RtCI)