Health care is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, or cure of disease or illness. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Access to health care may vary across countries, communities, and individuals, influenced by social and economic conditions as well as health policies. Providing health care services means "the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best possible health outcomes.

Vivek Shukla, Partner Healthcare, RSM Healthcare AE, is a Dubai based Healthcare Entrepreneur who started with leading a family-run 30-bed hospital to be the lead marketing team of Aster DM Healthcare group with 350 medical establishments across 8 countries. He is responsible for the Healthcare Consulting business and specializes in Strategy, Leadership, Business Growth, Brand Management, Marketing, Sales, Operational Excellence, Training, and Medical Tourism. 

RSM Healthcare AE uses an innovative approach of amalgamating Strategy and Technology to provide a holistic long-term solution that makes an astounding impact. The comprehensive client-centric “RSM Approach” enables healthcare clients to meet the business challenges and sets them up for a superior competitive advantage.

RSM Healthcare works on the grounds of growth and support
Vivek sheds light as to how RSM Healthcare AE provides high impact, long-lasting business growth offerings to healthcare organizations, “At RSM we work on two areas for healthcare, we work on growth and when I say growth we work on organic growth and inorganic growth and we support our clients which are most hospitals, we support them in growing organically or inorganically, so we can help them in revenue enhancement, margin enhancement, new market trends, new market entry strategies, so basically we help them in growth either organically or inorganically,” he says.

We imbibe a lot of technology in our growth solutions
Vivek throws light on how RSM envisages a unique and effective approach to enable healthcare providers to overcome their daily challenges, “We have a very unique approach in the sense that we look at growth not only in terms of strategy, not only in terms of planning but we also extend our complete support in execution and implementation of the strategy and plans that we make. So we kind of roll up our sleeves and we get down to implementation with the client teams to make sure that the growth projections that we have suggested and the growth plans that we have suggested are actually implemented that is number one. The other thing is we imbibe a lot of technology in our growth solutions, so to give an example, if we do a manpower planning for a hospital, it’s not just doing the manpower planning on an excel sheet or a PowerPoint, we also create a technology tool for them so that they can use this small software or tool what we create to do manpower planning for themselves on their own even when we are not aware of if we do a revenue projection for somebody or we do a report in which we are project revenue and patient footfalls and things like that, again we will give them a digital technology tool to help them predict by using various algorithms and sort of AI tool which will help them predict these numbers on-patients and revenues on their own. So we are not just doing a written report or a project and we are giving it to them, along with the report we give them digital technology solutions because that’s what clients nowadays need. I think the days where people were really impressed with fancy PowerPoint slides and project reports are gone. Now people want actual implementation and now they want to actually do it on the ground. And this is a digital world so they want solutions that can enable them to fulfill all those plans and all those strategies that have been created. So that’s the unique thing about RSM, we help in implementation and we do a lot of induction and infusion of technology into our solutions into our strategies,” he says. 

RSM ranked among the top 10 healthcare consulting firms in the United States in 2019
Vivek shares his experience, “That makes us feel very proud. We have done a lot of work in the US for more than 5000 healthcare clients in the US. RSM in the US works with all the big names including the mayos, and others. We support our clients in that part of the world mostly in growth through acquisitions, so we have very strong mergers and acquisitions transactions and rightly services in the US and we also have very strong technology solutions as well. So we look a lot in strategy growth as well as technology and yes that really makes us feel proud and happy,” he says.

Strong presence in the GCC countries
Vivek explains how his journey has been, “The Journey has been good, we all know the whole world is going through a difficult time, yet fortunately for us, we’ve been able to make some good initial in-roads into the middle-east and GCC markets. We have done projects in which we have helped clients in UAE, Saudi, and also we have done work in Bahrain so we have done some work in this region and this has been a good journey so far. The good thing is that I myself have been in this region for the last eight years now and even in my previous job where I was supporting a lot of Hospitals and other healthcare clients through my work, so that network those connections are still there, so that is a big help, he says.

How healthcare is provided is changing
Vivek believes that in spite of a difficult year, we’ve done well so far this year. “And I am sure being a very optimistic person that things will become better from here on, and we will see an end to the pandemic and the end to all this going on very soon and hopefully we will be back into the fast lane very soon. In this modern world, healthcare is a very important industry for more than one reason. So there is a huge role that the front line staff, the doctors, the nurses, and all the other healthcare workers in the hospitals have played. There are people who have been working overtime, saving lives, and contributing. So healthcare has definitely been in the center of focus in the last many months and now the world looks at healthcare very differently, how healthcare is provided is changing, and it has really changed in the last few months also. So we know that things will not be the same in healthcare, the way the hospitals are designed, for example probably will not be the same again because the hospitals in the future will be designed keeping in mind, that if there is a pandemic we need watertight segregation between the infected patients and the other elective patients so that the operations continue. So that’s one thing which will happen in healthcare,” he says.

Where there are challenges, there are opportunities
“There is a lot of focus on remote monitoring on teleconsultations and on virtual health. Some people call it telehealth some call it e-health, there was always focus on it but now it has become really important and people have realized that this is going to be the next thing. We have also seen in healthcare that there is going to be a lot of pressure on costs. From a business understanding point of view, hospital revenues have not been as much, because elective surgeries and other surgeries did not take place. Most hospitals have been dealing with COVID patients in many countries, so that’s going to put a lot of pressure on costs, on operational efficiencies, so a lot of re-thinking will have to be done and how hospitals will have to stay reliable from a business point. So these are some of the challenges which are coming up, it’s a mixed bag there are challenges in running hospitals and profitability, there are challenges in maintaining a workforce, keeping them healthy, keeping them motivated, there are challenges in terms of costs and revenues, and keeping everything in place. There are also some opportunities, like in telehealth, remote monitoring, there are opportunities in some pockets as well. So it’s a mixed bag, where there are challenges, there are opportunities but as I said we need to stay optimistic and look for a bright future,” says Vivek.

(Edited by Rabia Mistry Mulla)