Usher in a New Revolution in Home Healthcare through Critical Care Unified

Home-based health care in India is gaining rapid traction and poised for a major transformation. Recognized once as an unorganized and fragmented sector, it is rapidly capturing the interest of entrepreneurs and investors, giving rise to an organized, technology-led industry with standards and protocols.

Essentially, home healthcare has evolved from the idea of assisting a patient who is ill enough to need additional long-term care, but stable enough to not have to be in the hospital.  This typically requires either physician, nurse or trained caregivers in the home who can administer infusions, conduct basic rehabilitation exercises, provide respiratory therapy, and other moderately invasive procedures, up to and including hospice care. Yet, awareness is the ingredient that is lacking here and Critical Care Unified (CCU) comes as a messiah, to free patients from the shambles of inordinately high recurring hospital expense sand associated inconvenience.

CCU was conceptualized by the founders, Rajiv Mathur, Executive Chairman and Ambrish Mishra, Chief Operating Officer, commencing operations on December 1, 2016, based in New Delhi, with a motive to deliver superior services in Home Healthcare, thus obviating need for extended stay at hospitals, while providing adequate care at a significantly reduced cost. 

Idea

The idea of building a world class home healthcare company was triggered via personal experiences in areas such as:

• Post hospital/ICU discharge care options available in India
• Services available in nursing homes below par
• Lack of professional nursing care, especially in Critical Care areas
• High incidents of nosocomial infections in hospitals
• Back breaking costs for extended stays in hospitals
• Lack of transparency second guessing an uneasy feeling amongst users of hospital services
• Survey of friends and relatives revealed a very low level of trust in the medical system in India
• Lack of 'gutsy' companies to take on challenging requirements in Critical Care and deliver exceptional quality services.

The founders of Critical Care Unified (CCU) recognised the existing gap in the Home Healthcare landscape and how the use of technology could drive significantly higher levels of efficiency and user experience.

‘Healthcare services are consumed at a point in time when the morale of patients and their families is at a low point or even in distress’, says Rajiv Mathur. ‘It is so important at this point to demonstrate genuine compassion while delivering the service’, he professes and has cast in stone the motto of CCU: ‘COMPASSION WITH A PASSION’ which is followed by every employee of CCU.

Offerings and USP

The variety of services offered by Critical Care Unified is unmatched and includes: doctor visits, trained and qualified nurses and attendants, physiotherapists, medical equipment on rental or sale and medical consumables. These services are delivered for any specific illness, post surgical care and also extend to Continuous Care/ongoing wellness programs. The range of expertise is expansive – from setting up an ICU at home to providing a nursing attendant on shift duties. CCU employs a Core group of staffing the above categories and has a large pool of resources that are available ‘on demand’.

‘We have robust processes across the value chain; assessment to transition from the hospital to care provision in the home’, outlines Ambrish Mishra. ‘Integrating with intensivists and treating doctors at the hospital, with a closed loop of communication using technology, creates an environment to deliver better outcomes for the patient’, adds Mathur.

The following are the stars of Critical Care Unit’s invincible armour:

• Use of technology in emboldening operations
• Superior service as a one stop shop; especially in Critical Care
• Emphasis and investment in skilling the staff delivering the service
• Global reach to acquire the best in breed processes, SOPs and technology
• CCU's focus on significant use of technology remains the biggest differentiator from others in home healthcare.‘CCU's focus is to constantly stay ahead of other competing companies through comparing the 'net promoter score' related to its clients and to the workforce that is employed by CCU to deliver the services, says Rajiv‘This is enabling CCU to remain a rapidly growing company along with profitability whileserveing the larger interest of the country in creating a benchmark for the standards of services to be provided in home healthcare’, adds Ambrish.

Traction and Challenges

Like every radical idea, CCU has faced its share of challenges such as a deficiency in quality of professionally trained service delivery staff, lack of insurance coverage for home healthcare services, existence of a large unorganised sector offering below par services in home care at untenable prices, to name a few. Despite coming across such roadblocks along with solely depending upon the funding by promoters, the organization has clocked 30% growth in revenue Month on Month, the Delhi NCR region. It has serviced over 175 clients during the 6 month period with a strong word of mouth recommendation by them. Along with, it has remained profitable at both gross and net levelwith laser focus on unit economics.  A robust technology platform has been created to enable rapid scaling up of operations, augmenting the spread of awareness and usage of services.

Growth

In the current fraught start-up scenario where cash is being dispensed with zero sign of profit, Critical Care Unified is running a profitable venture as well as growing at a rapid pace.

Having implemented a model focused on Business Metrics rather than Vanity Metrics, CCU, the lean start up, is poised to unleash it’s aggressive growth plans in the next 6 months.