Community based Primary Healthcare Center

In India, every year, 1 in 20 people (~60 million Indians) fall into a cycle of impoverishment because of a health shock, making healthcare expenditure the single largest cause of impoverishment in the country. Health shocks, defined as unpredictable illnesses that diminish health status have a two-fold impact on one’s financial status through both the payments for medical treatment and the income loss from an inability to work. This forces many in India to adopt sub-optimal strategies of coping with this unprecedented financial burden which effectively feeds into other forms of inequity. Based on our grassroots initiatives across the last 12 years, we have identified the following systemic challenges as the key root causes for this situation –

1. Lack of evidence based, standardized and quality primary health care results in urban poor leading to preventable health shocks like stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, etc. which account for over 60% mortality and morbidity amongst urban poor,
2. Lack of effective mechanisms to hold providers responsible and accountable for their actions with consumer courts being the only mechanism of accountability which is inaccessible, inconvenient and ineffective
3. Low levels of awareness amongst the community resulting in unhealthy health and lifestyle practices

We operate a network of 18 ‘no-frills’, ‘just-around-the-corner’, ‘one-stop-shop’ medical centers that provide healthcare services in two departments – family medicine and dentistry. Each of our clinics (Swasth India Medical Centers - SIMC) provide high quality comprehensive services, i.e. consultation, medicines, investigations and procedures, at half the market rates to its customers.

With a high focus on Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) like Hypertension and Diabetes, we have enabled their diagnosis through proactive screenings and awareness camps in communities and their treatment through our clinic network.

Through an introduction of one-of-a-kind Service Level Assurances (called “Warranties”) for patients that define the consequences in case of breach of service by any of our clinics, we aim to building accountability in healthcare service provision. As an example, we offer an “On-time Report Warranty” for our pathology lab services, which means that we shall refund the amount and provide a free report in case the report is not delivered on time. Similarly we provide a “3-year-Warranty” on all our dental treatments. This coupled with our rigorous system of quality control through audits and collection of patient feedback, ensures our patients not only have high quality services, but also effective mechanisms to hold us accountable to this promise. 

In the last 10-years, we have been successful in creating and implementing extremely innovative solutions with the aim of reducing out-of-pocket expenditure and re-institutionalizing trust and balance in the relationship between a medical service provider and a patient. Till date, we have served over 1 million patients delivering direct patient savings of Rs 150+ Million with a customer satisfaction rating of 4.3 and a process quality compliance of 95%+. Towards the goal of preventing and controlling NCDs, we have screened over 40,000 people in the community and today we treat a portfolio of over 1,500 people for chronic conditions with ~69% of them having their parameters in control. We wish to magnify this impact by catering to a larger patient and community base.