Being associated with the healthcare industry for about 20 years, Suparna Sengupta, the CEO of Narayan Memorial hospital, shared her insight about the sector during her recent interview with us.

Will you please share the overview of Narayan memorial hospital and your expertise as a leader in the healthcare industry.

Building a hospital is not a very easy task as the healthcare industry has been facing various adversities for a long time. We don't have a proper system in India wherein healthcare takes priority. I have always felt that not only the healthcare workers but even entrepreneurs from the healthcare sector have always been skeptical due to the adversities they face. We face a strong regulatory challenge while starting a hospital especially when it comes to discounts and subsidies. Building Narayan was a big challenge for its owner. Being an expert in managing school and educational institutions, the owner decided to start a hospital as dreamt by his Late father Narayan Shaw. Narayan Memorial Hospital is located in a unique sweet spot between the main city of Kolkata and its suburbs. The fact that there was no such private hospital in this area was a very big challenge for him to begin with. The footfall in this hospital comprises of people across the spectrum, starting from low to middle income groups at one end and going on to people from urban and upper middle class at the other. Therefore, this hospital was built with the notion of being accessible, affordable and available for all sets of people, something no other private health care providers were offering in this area. And hence, my challenge has been to achieve all these three goals. I believe that these 200 bedded hospitals would be a game changer in the city of Kolkata because we cater to both the elite and middle-class sectors of the society. That said, I had to face a lot of adversities while opening this hospital as it was done in the middle of a Pandemic in April 2020 which was another unprecedented challenge for us.

Brief us about your journey till date and your prior experiences that you bring to the table. And what motivated you to enter the healthcare sector.

My father, an engineer, wanted me to be an engineer as well whereas I wanted to study Biology. My choice was to do something in the paramedical field rather than the pure medical one. Therefore, I studied nutrition from Calcutta University and during my post-graduation days I felt like opting for administration. I sat for CAT entrance exams and studied MBA in hospital management at the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management. I was selected by Apollo during the campus placements. I gained a lot of experience there and learnt numerous hospital management skills during my first six years at Apollo. Then I switched to Wockhardt which is called Fortis now.  After that I worked with Woodlands which we turned into a multispecialty hospital available for all with regards to comfort, luxury and care. After Woodlands, I joined Bhagirathi Neotia for a while after which I returned to Woodlands as COO & Director and then shifted to medical college in Durgapur, a paramedical and nursing college. It was one of the finest setups I had ever worked with. While gaining experiences from all these different hospitals, I felt as a healthcare administrator I should also enhance my skills and thus joined the National Law University of Bangalore and completed a course in Medical Law & Ethics there. My extensive experience, working in a private set up and a medical college for so long helped me to establish Narayan Memorial Hospital from scratch.

“Empowering people around is what i believe and practice”

Tell us about the challenges you have faced while working in Narayan memorial hospital. What strategies have you implied to overcome such situations?

We started with Narayan during the Pandemic as I have mentioned previously. There were around 40 staff for the 200 bedded hospital and all I wanted was to get the hospital running at least with 100 beds available. Thus, I focused on getting the right manpower for the right position even in that lockdown period. It was a huge challenge for me to get the doctors moving when doctors too were clueless on how to work ahead as it was a completely new set up. For me there was also the additional challenge of building the brand name and making people aware of our presence. So, we as a team worked hard to build what we wanted to build. All the departments like the HR, Accounts, me as the admin, the medical team including the nurses and doctors from the very beginning took charge of things to ensure things get going in spite of the lockdown. Another big challenge was to take patients and to assure them that there were no Covid patients admitted. As it was the first phase of Covid all of us, including the doctors and the administrative departments wanted to be absolutely sure and confident about the proper protocol to handle this unforeseen challenge. We had to abide by different guidelines and we, the hospital staff, had to follow certain protocols which led to us spending days at a time at the hospital instead of going home.

Therefore, the first challenge was to hire the right manpower, then build the brand and then to reach people and doctors after briefing them about the hospital. I had to motivate and take care of our staffs' health as well, along with keeping the treatment for our patients going. Following all the guidelines and hard work we successfully reached the milestone of being able to admit 100 patients concurrently within just 3 to 4 months post our launch.

What would you advise to young women who are keen to join the healthcare sector or who just want to become leaders of any other field?

I would suggest that every woman should remain positive in whatever they do. Be successful through happiness, because for me success is happiness. I would suggest that they experience and learn on their own on how to solve their problems as nothing can be taught or guided unless they themselves face the difficulties. I also believe that there is nothing called work-life balance, it is just about prioritizing. I also want more women to join the healthcare sector. Because women are better leaders and managers who can multitask with greater skill and efficiency and hospitals need such people who are emotionally sound and less prone to panic.

Suparna Sengupta, CEO, Narayan Memorial Hospital

Suparna is an expert in the hospital management activities.

Location: Kolkata