Aparna Desai / Chief Strategy Officer
Perspectives from a life in leadership.
The latest essay
Feasibility studies for hospitals in India's smaller cities still begin with population, bed density and land. The binding constraint is the number of specialists willing to move there and stay, and a board should approve a hospital only after it has seen that number.
Read the essayFeasibility studies for hospitals in India's smaller cities still begin with population, bed density and land. The binding constraint is the number of specialists willing to move there and stay, and a board should approve a hospital only after it has seen that number.
Hospital acquisitions in India are usually priced on beds, occupancy and EBITDA. What a buyer actually receives is narrower: the doctors who choose to stay and the referrals that follow them. Diligence and price should begin there.
Private hospitals in India's smaller cities tend either to cap their government-scheme patients or to cross-subsidise them silently from private tariffs. Both answers fail patients and shareholders. A pathway designed for fixed package rates can be sustainable, and a board should see its economics separately.