Gaps in Hospital Planning, Hospital Process Optimization and Hospital-IT

In terms of healthcare infrastructure, bed strength, and resource
optimization I see 3 gaps in the industry:

1- Green-field Hospital planning doesn't exist as a discipline in
India. There are no education institutes offering hospital planning
and hospital architecture courses. green-field hospital infrastructure
has to be planned from a people, process and technology perspective.
Whereas today you have hospital planning being done only from
infrastructure perspective. Usually process and technology is an after
thought! People planning is not even considered at the hospital
planning stage. This must change.

2- There is a lot of waste in hospital processes. US has estimated USD
600B of waste in their hospital processes. In India we don't even have
any such study. What makes us think that we will not have any waste in
our hospital processes? Brown-field hospital process optimization has
to emerge as a discipline. We can apply well known management
principles to save a lot of cost by standardization of the hospital
processes.

3- IT is a tool that can automate a whole lot of processes and prevent
errors. However like any tool it has to be used appropriately. Also
the initial cost of IT implementation is high and you reap benefits
over a longterm.

Physician Executives who understand IT and Management have to lead the
change. You need consultants that offers a bundle of the 3 powers -
Healthcare, Management and IT.