City firm joins $3.2 billion home health business

Bee Home Healthcare, a Chennai-based healthcare company is the latest entrant in this specialised segment, having officially launched their services in the city, on Tuesday.

The company was formed close to a year ago, but the team had been testing the waters during this period, offering services through referrals by word of mouth and other means. Once they saw the model was sustainable, they decided to go ahead with an official launch this month. Speaking to this newspaper, Dr Suresh Kumar, Founder and MD, says, “I was once hospitalised for dengue and typhoid, and was in a very bad shape. As my recovery got prolonged, I began feeling homesick and my need to be treated from home became the genesis of the idea. The service model revolves around looking after post-operative patients in their homes and reducing the duration  of a patient’s stay in the hospital. It encompasses patients of all kinds including the geriatric, which is a segment that is on the rise. The company’s services include nursing, physiotherapy, doctor visits and taking care of the complete rehabilitation and recuperation of a patient.” 

When asked about the USP of this new offering, Suresh, who specialises in General Practice says, “What makes us different is that we maintain the doctor-patient relationship. For instance, if a neurosurgeon sends us a case for nursing and he needs a review of the patient in two weeks, we take care of the rehabilitation aspects of the patient and also send the doctor daily progress updates. That way we maintain the doctor and patient’s comfort zone through our facilitating efforts.” 

Investment-wise, there is more to the company than money as Suresh explains, “More than the value of money, what really goes into such projects is discipline, time, efforts and expertise. We have a mix of both doctors and a business panel on boards. We have also been in talks with private equity investors with regard to the same. Infrastructure-wise, you need a very good response team at the back-end in the office to track the logistics of the therapists and be in touch with the patients to check on how the treatment is proceeding.” 

An area of contention is the manner in which insurance can be claimed for treatments carried out by home healthcare teams. Insurance has not recognised home  healthcare as a separate entity yet. However, there is post-operative care insurance, but there are many grey areas surrounding the concept. When probed about this, Suresh explains, “On the administrative side, we need to create reports, and file them correctly. One of our successes was in claiming insurance. We managed to do so for four to five patients. The only way we could claim the same was due to a transparent billing, and recording system.” 

Providers of such services believe that the home healthcare option costs a patient only about 1/5th or say 20 per cent of the cost incurred in a hospital during the safe period. 

“The simple logic is that it reduces the time and efforts taken to accompany an individual to the hospital and additional costs. Of course, there are some cases where a trip is a must, but what we could help with is reducing the frequency of visits.” 

Currently, the healthcare company is offering its services in Chennai, but plans are shaping up to take the brand to Bengaluru and Hyderabad next. The Tier 2 cities in the South come next, followed by north India. Within three to four months, once the operations are set in place, these expansions will be looked into. “The move to a new city is feasible once we hit the sweet spot of 300 patients a day. We are close to the goal as of now.” 

On the technical and cost front, he says, “As of now, we have a single booking application which takes the patient’s name and phone number and reverts to him or her in six hours. We are looking at a major digital drive with digitised maintenance of health records and historical data. We had started off as a premium service, but we broke that down. Today, we have several patients hailing from the middle class. Over time, we want to make this a service for the masses.”