| | JUNE 20208Global economy has been deeply affected by the ongoing Coronavirus crisis. Coronavirus affected patients require robust medical treatment. But ironically, most of the hospitals have scaled-down their operations due to the ongoing lockdown and consequent restrictions on elective surgeries to reduce chances of infection. When, if at all the lockdown will be lifted, remains uncertain, thereby increasing challenges for healthcare providers.Today, most of the private hospitals in India are running at less than 50 percent of their bed occupancies. This has had serious impact on their financial viability. Depressed revenues mean inadequate working capital to run hospital operations. Most hospitals are struggling with cash flows to pay salaries to their employees, clearing payments to vendors, suppliers and other business partners. Cost containments measure have therefore become unavoidable. These include scaling-down of unrequired activities and departments. Some hospitals have taken a decision to convert doctors THOUGHT LEADERSHIPRESPONSE OF THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY IN COVID TIMESBy Colonel Hemraj Singh Parmar, CEO, BR LifeCol. Hemraj has been associated with BR Life for over two years now, prior to which he handled key responsibilities at Ivy Hospital, Global Hospitals, Obijackson Group of Companies, and International Oncology Services, to name a few.on `fee for service' models, taking voluntary salary cuts, and in extreme cases, even laying-off employees. Although central & state governments have issued advisories to all industries against taking actions that would adversely impact the livelihood of their employees, the employers have been forced to take steps to remain financially viable and therefore take unavoidable actions to cut costs wherever feasible.Invocation of the NDMA has also forced some of the state governments to take-over few of the private hospitals to test and treat Covid patients. Currently, there are only more than 5000 reported cases of Coronavirus patients in the country, one of the lowest infection rates globally. This has been possible because of enforcement
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