India's hospitals reel from outpatient slump

People have been reluctant to visit hospitals out of fear of the pandemic.

Corporate hospitals in India will face pressure on their income as the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns caused a decline in outpatient footfall, according to a CARE Ratings report.

The outpatient department (OPD) volumes have been adversely impacted due to the reluctance of people to visit hospitals, out of fear of getting infected from other patients. Patients in medical tourism have also completely dried up due to the lockdowns.

Further, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has issued an advisory to postpone elective and non-essential surgeries, asking hospitals to discourage patients to visit OPD or instead utilise OPD services in primary or secondary care facilities rather than crowding tertiary care centres.

As elective surgeries are mostly an outcome of OPD visits, the IPD segment has witnessed a significant decline in the occupancy levels.

Hospitals could only expect an uptick in occupancy levels not until the latter half of FY 2021 once the lockdowns are lifted and the public at large starts visiting hospitals for elective treatments.

CARE Ratings projected that there has been a plunge in occupancy level by 40- 50%, and the average occupancy levels for many corporate hospitals have come down to the range of 30-40%.

Even before the lockdowns, India’s corporate hospitals were already reeling from the 70% slash in the price of stents and knee implants in 2018. Hospitals traditionally were making around two-third of profits from such consumables.