Redefining Rural Super Specialty Healthcare through e-Clinics

– Lakshmoji Tejomurtula

The fulcrum of modern super-speciality healthcare services is reaching out to where the services are most needed. Rich or poor, from city or town or village, educated or uneducated, skilled or semi-skilled… health emergencies spare none. India is among the few countries with the most advanced super-speciality healthcare services. However, these facilities are urban-centric while 67% of the country’s population still lives in small towns and villages. As most super-specialist doctors and their support systems are available only in metros and major cities, there is a visible gap between the need and feed of super-speciality healthcare services in India. The comprehensive solution to bridge this gap is Hyderabad-based Rxpert Super Specialty e-Clinics, run by a team of enthusiastic healthcare professionals with decades of domain experience.

General practitioners in small Indian towns and villages in both public and private healthcare facilities provide the best medical services to their ability, but certain chronic cases call for the timely intervention of super-speciality doctors. Conventionally, those rural patients who require super-speciality services are advised by their family physician to visit the city to consult the super-specialist doctors, which may force the patients to travel many miles. However, 8 out of 10 such patients do not undertake the city travel due to many reasons like not having time, not being able to arrange the funds immediately or not having anyone to accompany them to the city. As a result, they keep changing the doctors locally and aggravate their problems beyond any possibility of treatment. Even if a patient from a small town or a village is willing to visit a super-specialist doctor in the city, he will not know who the best doctor is or have no idea how much the treatment would cost. Further, a major chunk of their money goes into non-medical expenses like travel, food, and stay in the city.

This establishes the need for Rxpert Super Specialty e-Clinics through which the family physician of the patient can put his patient to a super-specialist doctor directly from his chamber, without the patient having to travel to the city. Rxpert Super Speciality e-Clinics is a comprehensive consultation platform where each patient has his/her permanent electronic medical record (EMR) that can be simultaneously accessed by both general physician and specialist doctor. Along with the real- time vitals, doctors can store the entire medical history of the patients, including the diagnostic reports and digital prescriptions in this EMR. With the convenience of referring to EMR while on video conversation, the specialist doctor will not miss any significant part of the patient’s medical history. As the patient is presented to the super specialist doctor by the patient’s family physician, it is easy for the super specialist doctor to have any real-time physical examination done on the patient through the family physician. This makes the patient feel like being physically taken to the city-based super-specialist doctor. Usually, rural patients who travel to the city to consult a super-specialist doctor do not necessarily have to be hospitalised and undergo a medical procedure on the very first visit. They are often advised with initial medication therapy, before any major medical procedure or surgery. With Rxpert Super Speciality e-Clinics, this first visit by the patient to the super specialist doctor can be done without having to travel to the city. Thus, Rxpert will help these patients cut down on one visit to the city. Patients may travel to the city only when it is necessary for a major diagnostic procedure or surgery.

Rxpert Super Speciality e-Clinics services are currently available in select towns and villages in Telangana and Karnataka. More than 30,000 patients have already availed of the super-speciality services through this well-designed technology platform. Promoters are planning for the expansion of services to other states, by joining hands with enthusiastic like-minded professionals from the quarters of corporate hospitals, healthcare investors, NGOs and healthcare conglomerates.