ehealth.eletsonline.comTowards an Untraded Mission -eHEALTHRead more on:Bhagat Chandra Hospital | chronic kidney disease |delhi | Ganga Ram Hospital | incubation | India | kidney disease |MD | NCR | Sharmila Das0 0 0 4Aseem Garg,MD, DCDCAseem Garg, MD, DCDC Kidney Care could not resist himself from venturing into the unknown when he was well placed in a cushyjob.Inspired by the demand-supply gap in the dialysis scenario ofIndianhealthcare, he envisioned DCDC Kidney Care. He shareshis thoughtson the dialysis care in India with Sharmila Das, ENN.What was your eureka momentto launch DCDC Kidney Care?I was very clear of my intention when I was pursuing studies inIIM-Bangalore that I wanted to do something inthe social spacethat too either in education or in healthcare. I wanted to beanTowards an Untraded Mission - eHEALTH about:reader?url=http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2013/05/towards-an-un...1 of 7 22/07/2015 23:53entrepreneur; reason being nevertook any bank jobs oremploymentwith any consulting firm. During thesecond year ofmy management studies I was making business plans. I enrolledmyself in social entrepreneurship course in the second year of the course. Around this time two thingshappened, one: I took thiscourse andsecond: Professor CK Praladh cameto campus andgave a very rewardingspeech on bottom of the pyramid.Theseare couple of factors that reallymoved me. Accordingly, I madesome business plans both in education andhealthcare. Inhealthcare, dialysis asa concept struck me. It was a fairly established method of treatment outside India. Here you canprobablycount the number of dialysis centerson the finger tips.So there was anopportunity that nobody was tappinginto and theconcept could save manylives National Kidney Foundation, havinga chain of 24 dialysis centers inSingapore, visited our campusand I apprised them of my objective andbusiness plan. I joinedthem for professional experience and thats howthis transition tookplace.Did you get any incubation help from IIM Bangalore?No incubation help per say. We had a strategic teaching coursewith a faculty there. When I made this business plan back in 2005, Idiscussed it with him and he encouraged me saying it is a goodconcept and alot of companies in US are looking forit. Soprobably the discussion helpedme, but I have not leveraged theincubation facilities of IIM- Bangalorefor this.Tell us about DCDC Kidney Care? What are the exclusive medical services you offer?We offer a normal, peaceful environment in which we providedialysis services. One dialysis session takes four hours and 2-3sessions in a week are recommended for a kidney patient.Towards an Untraded Mission - eHEALTH about:reader?url=http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2013/05/towards-an-un...2 of 7 22/07/2015 23:53Naturally, getting dialysis done in a hospital environment can be abittaxing psychologically for the patientso we need to create ahomely environment. Therefore at DCDC, we havebeds, we haveentertainment facilities like individual LCDs, videoprograms, movies, play stations, WIFI connectivity and the like. Theidea is to make and feel the patient that they are not in a hospitalbut settled in a very homely environment. If the patients want theycan watch movies, they can work on the laptops and most ofour patients work on the laptops during their stay at the center.What is the fee you charge for each session?On average, it works out only to be Rs 1500 which is much cheaperthan the corporate rates available. If you compare it with thecorporate set-ups like in Fortis, the average dialysis fees is Rs3000, in Apollo it is again Rs 3000, even a charitable trust like Ganga Ram Hospital is doing it at Rs 2400. So we are almost 40 to50 percent cheaper than the regular corporate worlds and providingthe same quality.How many dialysis sessions you have in a month?We are doing close to 5,000 dialysis sessions in a month thatmakes us one of the biggest player in this field.Are all of your centers located in Delhi?Yes, we have presence all over Delhi, NCR and we have onecentre in Panipat, Haryana. In next 20 days we are opening twocenters in Jaipur and one in Ludhiana and one in Hissar. So we willhave 12 centers by the end of this month. What are your views onthe current state of kidney disease in India or kidney relatedproblems in India. Kidney related disease has beena neglectedfield till now mainly dueto the lack of awareness and pooraffordability but the scenario is changing now and more and moreTowards an Untraded Mission - eHEALTH about:reader?url=http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2013/05/towards-an-un...3 of 7 22/07/2015 23:53peopleare getting aware. Kidney diseaseis purely a lifestyledisease. People come to End-Stage Renal Disease(ESDR) andfor dialysis because oftheir lifestyle hazards. If they hadadjustedtheir lifestyle and had theytaken proper precautions then this thing would have never ever happened. Almost 85 -90 percent ofthecases are due to blood pressure andsugar related issues.These days,diabetic and hypertension related problems areincreasing. However, asmore and more centers are emerging naturally the numbers of doctors arealso going up and they arespreadingmore awareness. Due to this peoplenow are able totake better care ofthemselves. Lately, health insurance havestarted covering kidney diseases, so the affordability factor is also slowly and steadily started getting resolved. We are hoping that allregulatory factors would come in to play and will have much betterservice offerings going on.How a kidney patient shouldtake care of himself or herself?A kidney patient shows some symptoms of this disease. Ifsomebody is in stage one or stage two the body does not showenough symptoms and whenever little symptoms are shownpatients tend to ignore them. Ultimately prevention is the best cure.A patient should be able to detect the symptoms at the beginningitself so that they can adjust their lifestyle accordingly. The way todo is getting blood test done once in a year so that they can find outif there is something wrong with the body or not. Once it is clearthat a person is into Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and going toget into dialysis, he needs to adjust his lifestyle. A proper dietcontrol needs to be taken care of along with proper psychologicalsessions so that his mind is happy. Proper consultation withphysicians and nephrologists should always be in place. We havedesigned a program to encourage our patients to take employmentbecause after sometime kidney patients get depressed. WeTowards an Untraded Mission - eHEALTH about:reader?url=http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2013/05/towards-an-un...4 of 7 22/07/2015 23:53have seen family members discouraging patients by saying you aresick and you dont need to work you just lie down etc which is awrong approach to heal the disease. We encourage our patients toget out and get a job and we offer them discounted treatment fee ifthey get a job. So its like a double benefit for you. Firstly you willbe contributing to the family, your family will start respecting youmore and that will boost your self esteem and you will also feel youare not a burden on any one and you will live a life with dignity.The center which you have started is exclusively a dialysiscenter or you provide some other services too?We provide certain support functions like psychiatric care to helpcure the depressed minds and dieticians are here to give balancediet plan also.Apart from these, do you cover diagnostic part alsolike MRI? No, we dont. However, we have regular blood testsfacilities. Normally, we outsource other diagnostics services or forfive centers we make a central hub wherein we provide a lab but forother centers we are mainly 90 percent in dialysis.Kidney disease is purely a lifestyle disease. People come toEnd-Stage Renal Disease (ESDR) and for dialysis because oftheir lifestyle hazardsHow do you get your patients from hospitals?We organise a host of on-field activities. In the recent past, weorganized a lot of seminars, kidney care camps etc. We triedadvertising, but I think healthcare is not suitable for newspaperadvertising. So I think for us, its the on- field activity to engagepatients, educating them about the disease, holding a lot ofpreventive camps etc help us to get patients from differenthospitals. Like the radiology companies outsourcing theirradiologist, complete MRI setup to different hospitals, are you alsoTowards an Untraded Mission - eHEALTH about:reader?url=http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2013/05/towards-an-un...5 of 7 22/07/2015 23:53in touch with the hospitals? We are already doing that. Wehavetaken over entire dialysis department of different hospitals and a lotofhospitals are outsourcing their dialysis need to us. For example,we haveour dialysis set up in National HeartInstitute, they did nothave dialysisdepartment earlier. Also, we have ourset up in KalraHospital and in Bhagat Chandra Hospital. Actually out ofour totaleight centers in Delhi, six areoutsourced departments to hospitals.What are the technology advancement happening in thisfield?From technology point of view, we have the latest machines thatare available overseas. Dialyses are getting much safer and it hasstarted getting more acceptances. There is no breakthroughtechnology till now because dialysis as a process is madeto be aspeaceful and painless as possible. I think the most successfulinnovation would be the artificial kidney transplant which will takeawaythe need of dialysis completely. We are now also providinghome dialysis to the patients. If the patient opts for home dialysis,we reach their home with our machines, technical supports etc. Weare actually innovative in our service delivery. We areoffering mobile dialysis for the patient who is not able to commute.We fit one ambulance with the requisite machines, doctors andtechnicians; they visit thepatient at his place or any otherplace and provide the dialysis. What are the challenges youhave faced to setup DCDC Kidney Care? The biggest challengewas from the fraternity itself as we are not doctors but outsidepeople and getting into dialysis and bringing a lot of disruptiveinnovations. There was a lot ofresistance from nephrologists,from established doctors, they were very skeptical about how thisprocess can work both in a standalone setting and in a hospitalsetting, because any kind of change is scary specially forthe people who are involved in it. It was mainly the fear of theTowards an Untraded Mission - eHEALTH about:reader?url=http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2013/05/towards-an-un...6 of 7 22/07/2015 23:53unknown, how the market will approach; whethertheir rolebecomes less important etc many doctors opposed us. We fought those challenges and ensured that theWe faced some regulatoryhurdles too.On issues like how you can start a standalone dialysis center etc.We tried to liaison with the Governmentto make them understandthat there should be regulations to govern this. Fund raising wasalways a problem, getting patients to the dialysis centerwas also aproblem as patients used to think that it was a specialtytreatment and they need to go to a hospital only not to a standalone enter. Now we observe the level of acceptance that hasbeen onthe increase. model works.0 0 0 4CommentscommentsTowards an Untraded Mission - eHEALTH about:reader?url=http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2013/05/towards-an-un...7 of 7 22/07/2015 23:53