Mumbai: Taking a cue from private hospitals hiring MBAs to improve customer service, the civic-run KEM Hospital has also begun accepting applications for service managers in the 18-38 age group for effective patient management.
KEM Hospital handles nearly 6,000 patients and their relatives in OPDs every day, with doctors sometimes facing verbal and physical abuse over dissatisfaction in treatment. The hospital said service managers will therefore be posted mainly in emergency medical areas to coordinate with relatives of patients and the hospital staff.
MBAs to be hired to help fill tense doctor-patient gap
KEM Dean Dr Sangeeta Rawat said there have been instances of verbal or physical violence owing to strained relations between patients’ relatives and doctors. “So we have decided to take onboard MBAs as service managers to help fill the tense gap,” she said.
Dr Rawat said, “A few private hospitals have hired MBA graduates for better results. I decided to follow it at our hospital on a pilot basis. Our main aim is to handle coordination between patients, relatives, doctors and nurses,” she said.
If successful, KEM Hospital’s pilot project will be implemented at other BMC-run hospitals, too. Besides the age limitation of 38 years, applicants should hold a full-time MBA degree and be willing to work in a three-shift system. The salary for a six-month contract would be Rs 40,000 a month.
A senior doctor from a private hospital said recruiting MBA graduates would help to reduce the workload of the staff as service managers would handle customer service. “It’s a good initiative by KEM Hospital,” he said.
