Hospitals
Started in 1976 as an 11-bed hospital in Madurai, Aravind now has branches at Theni, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Pondicherry, Dindigul and Tirupur. Some of the hospital are said to serve as many as 2000 patients per day. The hospitals provide high quality and affordable services to the rich and poor alike, yet be financially self-supporting. They have well equipped speciality clinics with comprehensive support facilities. This has been possible by attention to process and innovative methods to improve efficiency. For instance, doctors sit between two operating tables; when they finish with one, they just turn to the other patient who is already draped and ready. This way they are able to save valuable time between surgeries. These measures have made surgeons extremely productive. These measures have also pushed down the average cost of surgery. In the year ending March 2012, Aravind handled 2,838,689 outpatient visits and performed 349,274 surgeries. Aravind's surgeons conduct 2,000 operations a year, on an average. The number in the U.S. is just 125. The high number of surgeries, however does not mean more mistakes or a compromise on quality. The number of complications at Arvind are nearly half of those in the British Health System for the same procedures.
The name that Arvind has made for itself and high level of quality, attracts patients from all over the world who are willing to pay the market price for their treatment and surgeries. The profit generated from these patients is then used to cross-subsidise and fund free surgeries for poor people. At Aravind patients have a choice of whether they want to pay or not. To reach out to the rural Tamil Nadu Aravind has established its primary eye care facility named, vision centres. The community eye clinics take care of the ophthalmic needs of a semi urban population.
The Aravind eye care is believed to be the largest provider of eye surgeries in the world conducting nearly 7 percent of all eye surgeries in the world.
Read more about this topic: Aravind Eye Hospital
Famous quotes containing the word hospitals:
“Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general hospitals are private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeia than is now worshiped. Do not the quacks even direct small doses for children, larger for adults, and larger still for oxen and horses? Let us remember that we are to prescribe for the globe itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“... women can never do efficient and general service in hospitals until their dress is prescribed by laws inexorable as those of the Medes and Persians. Then, that dress should be entirely destitute of steel, starch, whale-bone, flounces, and ornaments of all descriptions; should rest on the shoulders, have a skirt from the waist to the ankle, and a waist which leaves room for breathing.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)