MOKILA - The Emerging Residential Township in Hyderabad: Continental Hospitals at Financial District

Crowded, elevators packed like sardines, the sick and unfortunate grappling for directions waiting for hours for doctors, invasion of personal dignity of patients, low self esteem of nurses and utter lack of emphasis on preventive care etc. are the thoughts that usually cross our mind about hospitals!

Well, one person Dr. Guru N Reddy embarked on a journey to bring a "new dimension to India's healthcare" with a mission to bring India's health care delivery processes to international standards and "Continental Hospitals" at Financial District, Hyderabad is a result of his dreams!

With several firsts to his credit in his career, Dr. Reddy embarked upon establishing Continental Hospitals to positively bring the latest in healthcare to his native country. Emulating patient centric medicine, understanding the impact of sound patient- physician relationships, and knowing the successes of collaborative practice of medicine are at the core of Dr. Reddy's passion to bring international standards to Continental Hospitals in Hyderabad.

While we often raise questions as to the methodology of treatment followed by most hospitals, at Continental Hospitals, they seek to provide evidence-based medicine. This practice, Dr Reddy believes, is going to be the future and the need of the hour. Here, patients will be able to question their doctors regarding their problems and not limit themselves to fearing the authority.

However, housed in an imposing 18-floor structure with built-up area of 1.3 million square feet spread over 6 acres of land, it does not look like a hospital. With spacious lobbies in each floor, well-ventilated rooms, a food court and an Internet cafe besides separate dining halls for the staff and doctors and parking place for 600 cars, the hospital looks like any of the swanky establishments of the global financial and IT companies that have set shop in the district.

A 700-bed super specialty hospital, it boasts care in 30 specialties, with focus on important areas such as neuro sciences, cardiovascular sciences, gastroenterology, orthopedics, joint reconstruction and cancer and radiation treatment.

"Continental Hospitals has a specially designed building that aims to maintain uni-directional flow of man and material to avoid cross infections. The first-of-its-kind design provides different entrances for different patient needs and specified towers (diagnostic & treatment, out patient and nursing towers) to answer patients health requirements," hospital founder and chairman Guru N Reddy said.

"I have done my due-diligence," he said, adding that for almost a year prior to the establishment of the hospital he had visited major hospitals in the country to explore their physical and operational structures so that he could adopt the best standards and designs. His experience in the US as a doctor also helped in shaping up the super specialty hospital.

Already catering to a number of specialties, the question of expansion is nowhere on the chairman’s mind. He says, “Our mission is to engage every section of society; we are not a corporate hospital but an institution. The name itself suggests we are so large, expansion is out of the question.”

The hospital has also plans to develop educational curriculum for the post internship and postgraduate training of medical doctors and nursing staff.

Continental's Unique Features:

India's first LEED (green building), certified super specialty hospital
Seeking NABH & JCI accreditation to be obtained with all the systems & processes and quality measures of international standards in place.
Large Parking spaces and patient movement through multiple entry and exit points.
Segregated, extensive internal transportation systems to avoid waiting and congestion, and enhance patient privacy.
Seamless integration of outpatient services, diagnostic services and inpatient facilities for physicians and staff.
Large specialty specific service level floors for the comfort of patients' location and movement and effective use of physicians' time.
Comprehensive, technologically advanced intensive care units with an emphasis on patient privacy, calm surroundings, visitor stay facilities and patient-physician conference rooms.
Ultra modern, large, specialty-specific operating theaters, designed with international benchmarks, to provide an outstanding experience for the surgeons, patients and staff at Continental
Imaging and lab diagnostic services equipped with several of the latest of technologies, for the first time in India. Patients will enjoy this 'one stop experience' with high standards of quality and results.
All inpatient rooms, both private and semi private, designed for natural ventilation, utmost privacy and sophisticated ambience.
The installation of robust Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems in partnership with two major global IT firms. The EMR at Continental will integrate all of the information into a single repository, minimizing redundancy and maximizing efficiency & communication. Further, the digital infrastructure of the facility will integrate every aspect and process in order to facilitate total service collaboration. These processes will minimize physician errors, nursing errors, enhance quality & transparency.