October 2015
The Sankara Nethralaya Ophthalmic Mission Trust now has a brand new website address!
We would like to draw your kind attention that the website address of Sankara Nethralaya OM Trust, Inc, USA, the awareness creation and fund raising arm of Sankara Nethralaya has been changed from www.omtrust.org to www.sankaranethralayausa.org
We are sure that you would agree that having the words ‘Sankara Nethralaya’ in the website URL would facilitate better brand recall and also help in identifying and underlining the relationship between the fund raising body and the parent institution, to browsers and potential donors.
We request you to kindly share this information with your circle of friends and contacts to help us spread the word fast.
Glaucoma Fellows from Sankara Nethralaya shed valuable light on the ‘Silent thief of Sight’ at major topical meet.
The glaucoma society of India held its Silver Jubilee meeting titled ‘Glaucoma Connect 2015’ at Mumbai from the 2nd to 4th of October 2015. Glaucoma Fellows from Sankara Nethralaya demonstrated their subject matter expertise and deep understanding of the vision impairing ailment through a well researched Poster and by winning an elaborate quiz contest covering all the parameters of the ailment.
While Dr. Priya Delampady’s well researched Poster titled ‘Correlation of defect depth and defect pattern of Central Visual Fields with mGCC of OCT’ was adjudged the ‘BEST PAPER’ among a total of 45 entries from all over India, the Sankara Nethralaya team of Dr. Kaivan Shah and Dr. Amit Pandey stood second in the quiz contest held on the occasion and received their prize from Dr. Vinay Nangia, President, Glaucoma Society of India. A total of 9 teams (18 players) from all over the country including Madras Medical College, RP Centre (AIIMS), PGI Chandigarh, L.V.Prasad Eye Institute, Narayana Nethralaya to name a few participated in the quiz. The preliminary round of the quiz was held on 2nd of October 2015 which included a written multiple choice question test and the main quiz was held on 3rd October-2015.
The Sankara Nethralaya Academy’s 2nd batch of Healthcare Quality Management program receives enthusiastic response.
The Sankara Nethralaya Academy (TSNA), the academic arm of its illustrious parent institution and world class eye care provider is committed to sharing the knowledge and experience of its parent institution to enhance the overall functioning of the Medicare industry, by improving every one of its multiple facets.
The need for better and more professional management of hospitals and better healthcare delivery became imperative in view of greater awareness levels and rising expectations of patients and their families, entry of Indian and overseas players into the health care industry, India especially South India becoming a preferred healthcare destination of patients from all over the world and the disturbing increase and complexity of ailments.
This is a first of its kind in the country Certificate Course dedicated to the area of Healthcare Quality, a key concern in Hospitals today. The spurt in medical errors, accidents and high profile cases of negligence has brought the entire healthcare sector under a cloud, negating the tremendous amount of good work actually being done.
This situation can be addressed only by professionalizing Hospital services and making quality as the very basis and crux in every aspect of the healthcare delivery, thereby ensuring Hospitals are safe and patient centric and the treatment provided is effective, producing the desired outcomes.
Realising this most critical need, The Sankara Nethralaya Academy, an academic wing of Sankara Nethralaya, the epitome of healthcare quality in the country, ACME Consulting, India’s largest Healthcare Quality Advisory and Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI), the only countrywide association of Hospitals in the country have joined hands to develop this Certificate Course that will help all categories of hospital staff right from Doctors, Nurses and Administrators to Radiographers, Lab Technicians and other Support Staff to become active participants in the Quality Improvement of their respective Hospitals.
This course was conducted at the Sankara Nethralaya main campus every Saturday afternoon, between 2pm and 5pm over the next 12 weeks.
The Course was well received with senior management Personnel like Directors, Medical Professionals, Management Executives from reputed healthcare institutions both domestic enrolling in it.
The Sankara Nethralaya Academy (TSNA) addresses the challenges of healthcare marketing
As part of its holistic approach to the management and delivery of healthcare and enhancing every facet of it, the Sankara Nethralaya Academy the academic arm of Sankara Nethralaya, a unit of Medical Research Foundation conducted an in-depth session on one of the most challenging and relatively untouched field of healthcare marketing. The session titled “Healthcare Marketing” was held on Saturday, 10th October 2015
Healthcare marketing assumes critical importance in view of the corporatization of health care delivery, the emergence of India especially Chennai as a preferred national and international health care destination, the entry of a large number of players into the healthcare arena, greater awareness and rising expectation of patients and their families have made health care delivery a highly exciting and competitive activity.
It should be borne in mind that health care as a service was not professionally marketed in the past. As a sunrise activity healthcare marketing does not have precedents to learn from, it is also governed by norms and ethics laid down by the Health Ministry.
The session was conducted by highly qualified and experience professionals like Mr Murali Subramanian, professor of healthcare marketing, Indian Institute of Knowledge Management (IIKM) and Visiting Management faculty to Sankara Nethralaya Academy, LIBA,etc.
The session was highly informative with a high level of interactivity. The participants had lots of fun as they played various roles as a part of real-time learning. The feedback given by the participants was excellent.
Mr A. Mahalingam, the Deputy Registrar of the Sankara Nethralaya Academy took this opportunity to wish the participants for their cooperation and successful completion of this session
The Sankara Nethralaya Academy (TSNA) conducts an informative session on effective medical governance on 05.09.2015
Dr. B. Krishnamurthy, Director, Quality Management Services, PES Institute of Medical Sciences Research, Kuppam, Andra Pradesh
Sankara Nethralaya Academy’s Certificate program on Health care quality management, both offline and online that included a session on a critical topic “Medical Governance”, got off to a vibrant start at the Sankara Nethralaya main campus on 05.09.2015 by Dr. B. Krishnamurthy, Director, Quality Management Services, PES Institute of Medical Sciences Research, Kuppam, AP
Sri A Mahalingam, Assistant Registrar, TSNA welcomed the gathering and extended his extensive support to online streaming of the session. Welcoming the Chief Guest Shrimathi Shyamala Selvaraj, DGM-Quality Management, introduced Dr. Krishnamurthy as an Anaesthesiologist and adult Intensivist trained in India and UK with over 30 years of clinical experience in provision of acute care in Anesthesia and Adult Critical Care. She added that, he has devoted himself to helping various hospitals set up Quality and Safety Management programmes and achieve certification and accreditation in the last five years, been a principal assessor and Trainer, NABH and an Honorary Advisor to AHPI.
Dr Krishnamurthy in his lecture pointed that Medical Governance formed an integral part of Leadership and Governance that referred to both Corporate and Clinical Governance, objectives and duties of Health care organisations to efficiently manage the finances of the organisation and achieve optimal level of patient safety.
Extensively covering on Clinical Governance, he observed that the spectrum included Clinical audit, clinical effectiveness, R&D, Openness, Risk management, Education and training, that cyclic process which standardised, constantly and qualitatively improving clinical care by identifying problems, risks, safety standards, update of technical knowhow through training methodologies that resulted in Continuing Professional Development.
Quoting Stephen R. Covey an expert on effective and efficient management, Dr Krishnamurthy pointed that effective leadership included multiple management systems such as Information Security Management systems, Emergency and Food safety management systems. He explained the vital role of communication skills in Health care setting, to imply diagnostic accuracy, patient safety and compliance.
Explaining the nuances of Clinical Audit from definition of clinical audit as a systematic review of care against explicit criteria and implementation of change, he observed that in any Health care organisation, several aspects Internal, External, Financial auditing, Sentinel Event monitoring, Quality and Safety Indicator monitoring, Medical record review, safety survey all formed the crux of Audit assessments and surveys.
Dr Krishnamurthy elaborated that Clinical Audit process should include identifying issues, setting criteria and standards, data collection, comparison of performance vs criteria and standards and implementation of changes.
The high power session ended with a vote of thanks after a brief Q & A session.
The Sankara Nethralaya Academy (TSNA) Conducted a Session on Role of Human Resource Management in Healthcare on 3rd October 2015.
The Sankara Nethralaya Academy conducted a training program on Saturday 3rd October 2015 on the topic “Human Resource for Healthcare Managers” for the Certificate course on Hospital Management Program.
The session started with a warm welcome note and the need for this unique session on Human Resource for healthcare managers by Shri A. Mahalingam, Deputy Registrar of the institution, he also highlighted that this session is aims to provide participants a comprehensive understanding and practical insight into the knowledge skills and techniques required to efficiently tackle the HR issues in the present scenario.
Prof Ramakrishnan is a senior HR Management faculty with 4 decades of experience in HR Practices and Teaching in leading Business schools. He is also visiting faculty for management programs at Sankara Nethralaya Academy is the speaker for this unique program.
Starting off with the scenario of the health care sector in India, the module covered the key functions of HR viz Talent Acquisition, Training, Performance Management system, Career & Succession Planning & Employee Health, Safety & Welfare.
The other aspects like Employee Retention, Job Rotation, and Employee Satisfaction & Grievance Handling also formed part of the program.
In the concluding part of the session, the participants were divided into small groups wherein each group had to come up with a challenge faced by HR in the health care sector or at their workplace and also explain on how they would overcome the said challenge with suitable solutions and processes that would be followed.
The participants put forth a lot of questions and were enthusiastic throughout the session and the session ended with vote of thanks. The feedback given by the participants was excellent.