Creating Future Healthcare Managers
The private healthcare market is poised to grow to $280 billion by 2020 at 40 percent CAGR. Hospital sector alone would require additional 7 lakh beds in next five years. Understanding the implications of the growth in this sector, IIHMR is continuing its focus to produce quality healthcare professionals to meet the increasing demand for the health and hospital management professionals. \"Our main objective is to provide quality healthcare education to the students and ensure that the learning experience is unique,\" says Dr. Biranchi Narayan Jena, Director, IIHMR. IIHMR, Bangalore is a dedicated Institute for Health and Hospital Management education, trainings and research activities in South India. The entire course curriculum is dynamic and supported by the in-house research capabilities. The institute places its students in reputed organizations such as Dellloitte, Cognizant and all major healthcare providers in the country such as Apollo, Fortis and Manipal.
With an eye on improving the healthcare sector the Director explains that \"Once the synergy is built, IT is expected to play a major role in improving the diagnosis rate for life style diseases and the capacity building among the huge pool of health care providers.\" He believes that telemedicine is growing faster than ever with startups venturing into this market and increasing the competition. The market has the potential to grow from $7 million to $20 million in 2017. Information technology has the capability of making healthcare ubiquitous and available to everyone at the touch of a button. To supplement this, the institute has introduced a new specialization HIT (Health Information Technology) that combines Health and IT sectors. IIHMR is working in this direction to ensure the accessibility and affordability of quality healthcare through research, training and collaboration.
Functioning as the backbone of the institution is the faculty. The faculty members of the institute come from diverse backgrounds such as public health, health economics, and quality and patient safety. Faculty members of the institute are involved in many research projects funded by national and international funding agencies, in their respective disciplines. Thus, this provides them with a unique advantage to bring research based insights to the health and hospital management programmes.
The Healthcare management institution also has a wide industry network to supplement its courses. \"The students at the institute are prepared in such a manner that they can operate as managers from the day they graduate,\" claims Dr. Jena. This requires a very strong industry interface and exposure to practical issues at hospital or any healthcare organisation. To facilitate this the institute has collaborations with numerous leading hospitals, healthcare IT companies, NGOs and other healthcare organisations that connect with students through guest lectures, industry connect events and on-site visits. Maastricht University, Netherlands, is an exclusive partner of the institution and has regular exchange programs and knowledge sharing sessions which help the students in gaining a global perspective on the sector.
IIHMR is the first educational institute to get the NABET (National Accreditation Board for Education and Training) accreditation as Hospital and Healthcare Consultant Organization on NABH Standard. This allows the institute to help various hospitals in practicing quality guidelines as per NABH standards. The training sessions conducted by the institute allows it to bring such experience to the classroom where students are rewarded with an insight into the workings of the industry.
A structured training programme for working executives on healthcare leadership is offered at the institute. \"The research on designing such programme also helps in introducing the healthcare leadership as an elective for our regular students with an objective of developing leadership qualities among students to take healthcare to the next level,\" says Dr. Jena.
A Closely Monitored Internship
The Internship program is the essential part of course where students undertake various roles in organizations in diverse sectors. During the internship, students work closely with the Administrator/Manager in day-to-day operations in the organizations. Through this process students are expected to gain practical knowledge and skill to handle managerial issues related to major departments of the organization. During this period, the Administrator/Manager maintains communication with the faculty mentors, so that the learning from theory to practice is done swiftly. \"We ensure that internship programme provides practical knowledge about the processes and procedures in the organization, so that once the students join the organization, they start contributing as managers,\" says Dr. Jena.
The healthcare management institute that is creating a new breed of healthcare managers to tackle the upcoming problems of the industry is setting a benchmark for management institutes across the country. The Director explains that the institution aims to solve key issues in the sector such as implementation of technology in the healthcare sector, to create value for the patients and to improve patient safety in the coming years.
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