How Healthcare Consulting can Improve Standards of Healthcare Services

The important role that healthcare consulting firms in India are now playing to raise the quality of healthcare services

The healthcare industry plays a pivotal role in society. The fulfillment of trust and expectation by a healthcare provider forms a cornerstone of the sacrosanct doctor-patient relationship. However, operationalising this promise of quality has its challenges in a modern-day multispeciality hospital structure.

The patient is the centre of all services, systems and processes of a healthcare institution. The reality on the ground causes strain on hospital resources to deliver services effectively and efficiently all the time. This is where healthcare consulting has a role to play in being an external expertise that can help objectively monitor, evaluate and improve healthcare services according to internationally acceptable standards. Healthcare consultancy can help a healthcare institution focus on each of the various moving parts required to come together to deliver consistent quality. 

Building patient-centric areas of quality

By changing the optics of quality healthcare by putting the patient front and centre, a healthcare institution builds their brand and reputation on important patient-centric metrics that become the institution’s greatest asset.

Safety and effectiveness:

A patient always comes to a healthcare provider with the belief that their health is in safe hands. Patients must be treated with due respect and their safety is a priority. Healthcare services also need to be effective in that the healthcare provider is able to communicate clearly to meet the expectations of the patient and services provided must yield expected or intended results.

Equitable and patient-inclusive:

All patients, no matter their background, must receive the same high quality services. All services must be clearly discussed with the patient, transparently and allow for the patient to also have their opinion and preferences heard and where possible, met. Allowing the patient to play an active role in their own care is important in giving the patient the best treatment possible.

Efficient and on-time:

A healthcare institution must be able to assess the resources, both medical and support, required to service a patient and improve on this efficiency. Adhering to timelines drawn out for a patient’s treatment is also important to meet high quality standards of healthcare services. Healthcare consulting should be able to quantify every resource that goes into producing an output.

Communication and empathy:

The interactions that take place between doctor-patient, nurse-patient as well as with caretakers or family of the patient is an element that greatly contributes to the overall experience of the patient. In the Indian context, interactions with the patient’s family is also extremely important and needs to be dealt with care and respect. Training all hospital staff in appropriate communication with the patient community thus becomes a subject that hospital consultancy services can address.

Healthcare consulting firms in India play a pivotal role in the healthcare industry by providing an objective perspective to assess gaps in services and bring in specialised services, support and training to fill those gaps. Healthcare consulting teams can bring in subject matter experts with very high- level experience to focus on problem solving in a way that is difficult for a hospital’s own administration to address on top of responsibilities that already exist.

If you want to know more about healthcare consulting or healthcare consultancy services, feel free to contact us and we would be happy to take you through our portfolio of services.