About Fortis
Fortis Healthcare Limited is one of the leading integrated healthcare providers in India. The healthcare verticals of the company primarily comprise hospitals, diagnostics and day care speciality facilities. Currently, the company operates its healthcare delivery services in India, Dubai and Sri Lanka with 43 healthcare facilities (including projects under development), approximately 9,000 potential beds and over 400 diagnostics centres.
Among many other awards and accolades conferred to Fortis, in a global study of the 30 most technologically advanced hospitals in the world, its flagship, the Fortis Memorial Research Institute’ (FMRI), was ranked No.2, by https://www.topmastersinhealthcare.com.
Overview – Fortis and Practo
To make healthcare simpler and more accessible for patients through digital solutions, Practo and Fortis embarked on a journey together in August 2017. After joining hands with the hospitals in South India, our association grew stronger to cover Fortis hospitals pan India.
Our shared vision to simplify healthcare with digital solutions led to a seamless onboarding and integration of 25 hospitals pan India within just 15 days! As part of our partnership, over 1000 doctors from Fortis provide instant booking and low wait times to patients through Practo Products (Prime & Qikwell) to ensure superior patient experience.
Key challenges we aimed to solve together
With our joint vision to improve patient experience in the digital age, we hoped to provide solutions in these key areas:
- Digital visibility of doctors
Compared to other industries, technology is reinventing the healthcare space slowly but surely. Both Fortis and Practo were aware of the need to bring in digitization to improve patient experience, at the same time ensuring that quality healthcare is delivered. It was important to provide a digital platform for millions of patients visiting the hospital.
- Ease of booking and access
Healthcare has been one of the largest industries in India with a potential of growing up to $372Bn by 2022. Smartphone penetration has been on the rise and all the industries, including healthcare, have been working to make their services available with a click. Fortis is a pioneer in understanding the need to solve this, and also looking for digital solutions to enhance patient experience.
Strategy and solution
Keeping these challenges in mind, Practo Prime was built from scratch to provide a solution by bringing convenience, predictability and quality together in the Indian healthcare ecosystem. Prime is unique in its approach to simplify doctor discovery and ease of booking and access, something which no other product in the market is solving for.
- Convenience
- Providing low and predictable wait times to patients.
- Building doctors’ digital presence online.
- Facilitating instant appointment booking and confirmation.
- Accessibility
- Making doctors’ available slots visible to patients online.
- Increasing the hospital’s efficiency with digitisation and reducing manual dependency.
- Quality
- Providing quality healthcare with experienced and trusted doctors from Fortis, which is known for its seal of trust.
- Ensuring that updated qualification, experience and speciality is visible on doctor profiles.
- Dedicated teams from Fortis collecting patient feedback to help other patients make an informed decision.
- Following a rigorous verification process to make no compromise on patient experience.
Impact
- Almost 90% growth in per month appointments
Since Fortis was on-boarded pan India in September 2018, we have seen a 2x growth in appointments per month as of September 2019.
- Over 1000 doctors providing assured benefits to patients
Patients get an exceptional visit experience as 1000+ doctors provide benefits like instant appointment booking and low wait time to patients. These 1000+ doctors contribute to 70% of the total monthly appointments.
- Patients get connected to doctors anytime, at all times
In case patients make a call to a doctor outside business hours or in case the doctor is unavailable, these calls are meticulously tracked and directed to Fortis with a turn-around-time of 60 minutes.
- From 4 to 25 hospitals pan India
We started with 4 hospitals at the beginning of our partnership and now we have 25 Fortis hospitals onboard with Practo.
- Entire patient journey close-looped – from doctor discovery to follow-up
Dedicated investment in terms of manpower and resources from Fortis and Practo helped ensure that the entire patient journey was close-looped. Right from doctor discovery to online booking to OPD experience with wait time to the collection of feedback.
- Patients get real-time information about doctors
With Fortis data seamlessly integrated with Practo, any change in doctor profiles or any important information is immediately reflected on their profiles for patients’ perusal.
Testimonial
“We must remember that the healthcare industry’s primary goal, in any part of the world, is to provide quality healthcare to all those who need it. Many times, it does not happen due to information asymmetry, affordability issues and barriers to access. While all those challenges may be difficult to address in a country like ours, some parts of the problem can definitely be addressed by the digitalization of healthcare. Practo is spear-heading India’s healthcare agenda in that sense by leveraging an integral part of today’s routine – the online booking which has helped healthcare reach the last mile through technology. The benefits of digitalization are visible across all areas of healthcare and Fortis itself has made strides in this direction even though we are not a technology company. That’s because our aim has always been to provide quicker and better healthcare services to our patients and increased use of technology to connect with our patients is helping us do that more efficiently.”
About Practo Prime
Practo is India’s largest and one of the world’s leading digital healthcare platforms. Founded in 2008, Practo started by building technology tools for Providers and it now connects crores of patients with 1 lakh+ healthcare providers. With our consistent efforts spanning over a decade, Practo has been the one-stop solution for online appointments, doctor listings, patient stories, online consultations, digital health records, booking health check-ups at home and ordering medicines.
Out of the many key offerings, which have put Practo on the healthcare map, one was introduced a year ago – Practo Prime. Prime is a technology product for clinics and hospitals which helps them provide an exceptional visit experience to patients with assured benefits. Prime redefines the way patients visit their doctors. It helps bridge any sort of disconnect between them and allows no room for any hassle or uncertainty. By combining quality with convenience, Prime has helped people be more serious and in control of their health.