The Midas Touch

Medical Administrator, Business Development Head, Academician-one word cannot describe him. In a career spanning over 17 years at premier hospitals, Dr Ravindra Karanjekar straddled various worlds, always attaining success. The General Manager of Wockhardt Hospitals, Mumbai shares his ideas, philosophy and vision with Rita Dutta

Around two years back, jet-setting and high-profile Dr Ravindra Karanjekar raised eyebrows when he gave up the job as the Director of Business Development at Fortis Group and settled for a not-so-exciting CEO's job at Dr DY Patil Hospital, that too at one-fourth the salary. Now, he is back in the corporate limelight as the General Manager of Wockhardt Hospitals, Mumbai.

But what could be more important than a great job and an amazing career? Well if there is anything better, it is the family. "My son was in the tenth standard in Mumbai and I had to come back from Mohali for the sake of his studies. Also, I found an opportunity to work with a different model, as in the medical college and hospital in the DY Patil job offer. Otherwise, who would ever leave a Fortis job?" questions an ever-candid Dr Karanjekar, while we meet him at Wockhardt Hospitals, Mumbai.

As fate would have it, while at DY Patil, he received job offers from both Wockhardt and another prominent hospital group on the same day. "I found the Wockhardt Group committed to healthcare and my interactions with Chairman Habil Khorikiwala and Vice President- Operations, Vishal Bali, influenced me to accept the Wockhardt offer."

The Story So Far

Born in Sangli district of Maharashtra, Dr Karanjekar completed MBBS from BJ Medical College, Pune University and acquired a Diploma in Hospital Administration from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Although he did not face any major hardships in life and got the right breaks early, success has clearly kept him rooted. "My needs are few. I can even survive on a salary of Rs 5,000 a month," says Dr Karanjekar, the much sought-after executive in the healthcare industry.

Starting his career in 1976 as an Administrative Officer at MGM Hospital, Mumbai, he worked with Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital, Mumbai as Medical Administrator, and then with Lilavati Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai as Hospital Administrator. He accepted the gauntlet of launching Ahmedabad-based Krishna Heart Institute as Chief Administrator and then went on to work with Fortis Heart Institute and Multi-Speciality Hospital at Mohali as Medical Director and Fortis Healthcare, New Delhi as Director, Business Development. As familial duties beckoned, he came back to Mumbai to work with DY Patil Hospital as CEO.

Interestingly, the experience that he cherishes most is the days spent at Krishna Heart Institute (KHI). "KHI is my baby. I ran the hospital from day one single-handedly, set up the SOPs, bridged the gap between doctors and promoters and made the hospital profitable within 100 days," he remembers fondly. After a moment's pause, he adds, that it was definitely the Fortis years that opened his eyes towards healthcare in the remote corners of the country. "I had to tour the interiors of Punjab and Haryana extensively to market our hospitals," he says, walking down memory lane.

The hunger for varied experience is yet insatiable. His ultimate dream is to head a chain of hospitals. But, does it always bode well to change organisations that often? They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. "I am very ambitious and my appetite for multiple experiences eggs me on from one place to another. I do not want to gather moss. When I realise that I have achieved what I set out for, I move to the next goal," says an ambitious Dr Karanjekar.

Driving Force

He is motivated by diligence, truth and sincerity, drawing inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and Shivaji Maharaj, besides his own father, who was a judge. From Gandhi, he learnt the importance of being truthful; Gandhi's "My Experiments With Truth" is one of his favourite books.

Shivaji's life is a lesson in leadership and good governance. "People sacrificed their lives for Shivaji's cause and vision. That is what leaders are made of," says Dr Karanjekar. He also draws inspiration from people around him.

A workaholic, Dr Karanjekar gets up around four in the morning to read for around three hours. His favourites are biographies of great people. Besides reading, he unwinds by playing cricket, golf and travelling.

People Management

A firm believer in trusting and motivating people to deliver their best, he is ruthlessly intolerant towards dishonesty and indiscipline. "I am unsparing towards tackling dishonesty, cheating and indiscipline," he emphasises. We throw a googly. How would he deal with a person who is intelligent, but undisciplined? "If the person is intelligent in sporadic manner, but has his own agenda, he is more like an isolated island. We need people who can work in a team and hence there is no room for people who are sporadically intelligent," comes his frank reply.

His people management skills are unique. One is surprised to know that every day he chats up a hospital employee during lunch, trying to understand him and his work. "Why waste that one crucial hour?" asks he.

Varied Role And Tenets

A modest person, after much prodding, he agrees to share his role as a teacher. He was a faculty member at All India Institute of Local Self Government (AILSG), Mumbai and Course Director for a Certificate Course in Hospital Management, TISS, Mumbai. He also wears the mantle of a mentor for M Phil (Pharmacy & Hospital Management) students at BITS, Pilani, and is a guide for MHA and MPhil at TISS and AILSG.

His pet topics are "Hospital Planning" and "Materials Management" as he believes there is a yawning gap between pre-conceived function (theory) and actual function (practice), which needs to be bridged. "I have seen hospitals which are not able to implement Phase II because of changes that they made in Phase I. The fault lies with the promoters and architects. Hence, hospitals need modular planning, whereby there can be exchanges and shifts in departments without any compromise in quality," explains Dr Karanjekar, founder President, Federation of Hospital Administration of India.

We ask him to elaborate on Asian Heart Institute (AHI) which recently decided to shift gears from being a cardiac hospital per se to build a multi-specialty hospital. He skirts the example politely, "I cannot comment on AHI. As far as Fortis goes, I can say that when Fortis went to multi-specialty hospital from being just a cardiac hospital, we had to first de-brand and re-brand the product. That was not an easy task for us," he remembers. His advice to others is: If a hospital plans to become multi-specialty in the future, but wants to start with a single specialty, it should promote itself as multi-specialty group with focus on a single specialty right from the beginning. Just to spare the labour of re-working on the image makeover.

When asked to comment on the booming healthcare industry pegged at USD 23 billion, he surprises us by saying, "India still lacks in equitable distribution of medical facilities. There are hardly any good hospitals between Pune and Sangli, Nasik and Nagpur." There are flickers of hope though. "In the next few years, Wockhardt is coming up with around 25 hospitals. Fortis, Max and Apollo are also planning hospital chains in various locations," he informs.

He is glad to witness the importance accorded to professional hospital administrators, an offshoot of corporate culture. "The future of healthcare belongs to corporate hospitals, mainly the ones with chains of hospitals. Corporate hospitals are more transparent in their functioning and have less bureaucratic hassles, when compared to charitable hospitals," he avers.

Budget Expectation

As a pragmatic solution to the battle raging between trust hospitals and NGOs regarding free medical treatment of the poor in Mumbai, Dr Karanjekar suggests that budget should offer new schemes to support medical facilities for the poor, rather than solely depending on trust hospitals.

Are not the trust hospitals shirking social responsibility by refusing to treat the poor? "The government can pay for the cost of consumables for the poor in trust hospitals, if the hospitals are reluctant to pay," replies Dr Karanjekar. With Medical Tourism promising big bucks, Dr Karanjekar feels, the Indian government should work for development of infrastructure.

Government's Role In Healthcare

While everybody harps on reduction on import duty on medical equipment in this age of fast obsolescence of technology, Dr Karanjekar is keen that the government should take a practical approach towards public private partnership (PPP), hinting towards the PPP between Wockhardt and government to run the GT hospital, which was "a non-starter".

"PPP is for maximum utilisation of government assets for the benefit of the general population. However, the government should not expect that all beds in private hospitals can be free. The private group has to make profit and profit is not a dirty word," he says, emphatically.

The government should invest more in R&D by encouraging indigenous manufacturers of technology, mainly stents. When told that doctors are apprehensive of using Indian stents as they feel they are mere imitations of imported ones and not enough trials have been conducted, he responds, "The government should first ask its own hospitals to use the Indian technology and ensure that sufficient trials are conducted."

Additionally, the government should also promote India's private healthcare facilities in international forum, as it did with IT and other sectors in the recent "India Everywhere" campaign in Davos.

Leaving Behind A Legacy

In his mid 50's, Dr Karanjekar is already on his way to train his next generation as he believes that sharing knowledge always increases the frontiers of knowledge.

"In my lifetime, I may not see the changes that I have dreamt of. Let me pass on my knowledge to my next generation, so that my dreams are fulfilled through them," says he, speaking like a true visionary. As we wind up the interview, and he readies himself for a photo shoot for us, we feel there are many more layers beneath this irrepressible personality that possibly cannot be captured even in multiple interviews.

rita_dutta@rediffmail.com