What is the value of a person’s life?
We wouldn’t dare presume to know the value of a person’s life, because as far as we are concerned, it is always priceless. What we do know for sure, is that the value of a person’s life can only be understood by those who love him and are close to him.
This simple understanding serves as a backdrop for everything we do at Invocure. We recognize that we not only have a responsibility towards our patients, but to their loved ones as well. It is more than a job, more than just business. When we enter this line of work, we have to recognize that by the very act of entering starting something, a sacred duty is placed upon our hands and our conscience. A duty to work with human lives and do our best to preserve it. The value of a person’s life can only be understood by himself and those who love him. If we can understand that with humility, we are likely to do a decent job.
The Covid 19 global pandemic has caused many to lose their loved ones all over the world and the death tally was a devastating thing to witness. The pandemic has not only made us realize how valuable a thing human life really is, but also has re-iterated the importance of maintaining good health in our day-to-day life.
Apart from that, it also brought into light the frailty of our healthcare infrastructures and shown the world how disease prone our society really is despite all our advancements. We never know when a new disease might crop up out of nowhere and bring society to it’s knees. In this kind of a world, merely tending to the symptoms of diseases as they crop up is not enough, when there are new diseases emerging faster than we can deal with old ones.
A conscious commitment must be made to attempt eradicating diseases.
Healthcare firms can get carried away by only treating the symptoms of patients, and not attempting to eradicate the underlying conditions simply because it has become common practice in the industry around the world to view this line of work as an engine of commerce by keeping the patient dependent on medical care and charging them enormous amounts for the same. Patients themselves know that many healthcare firms do not always attempt to cure the patient, but simply prolong the treatment of the disease so that they can charge patients more and more for the prolonged care in their facilities.
Not only is this kind of practice unethical, but it also stands in sharp contrast to how nature works the healing process in our bodies. Over-reliance on human contrived medical intervention causes the body to lose its ability to heal itself naturally. We have to proceed from the understanding that the human body has evolved to heal itself from most injuries and illnesses through millions of years of evolution. Even though we are living in a highly disease prone civilization where we can never tell which new disease or virus may crop up, we do not forget that nature has made our bodies resilient by design. Human beings are usually stronger than they think they are. Every medical case is different in some vertical, but in the final analysis, the body is made by nature to adapt, to heal and to reach equilibrium, by and large, on its own.
We do not forget this and subsequently recognize the gravity of the duty we have in our hands here when we deal with each patient.
Our dream is to be recognized as a truly patient-centered operation with comprehensive healthcare solutions for patients and their families. Even if we do not provide all the solutions that are needed by the patient in any particular case, it is our duty to function as a catalyst to meet the needs of the patient by guiding them to the right place, where we fall short. By doing this, we aim to be a driving force and role model for patient-centricity in the healthcare industry known for our authenticity among patients and their loved ones in always upholding the highest ethics and values in all that we do.
That much valuable recognition of authenticity from our patients would be our biggest accomplishment. If we can get that nod for the character of our company, we would consider ourselves to be a success.
The words of Dave Packard echo our sentiment towards this:
“I want to discuss WHY a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively which they could not accomplish separately. They are able to do something worthwhile— they make a contribution to society (a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental).”
– Dave Packard.
To bring in exceptional primary care to the communities we serve, in a way that engages profoundly with patients and their families, establishing us as their pre-eminent choice within a decade.
Our Vision
To become a driving force for the patient centric healthcare model and set a benchmark for it through a participative approach.
Our Values
We aim to be an organisation inspired and guided by a set of sound ideals.
These are our most enduring and essential tenets, never to be compromised. These fundamental tenets are a backdrop for our company – existing in the background, but always present as a vital shaping force. These are not to be taken for as just sentiments. The strength of these tenets will only be in the daily actions of our people that reflect the sincerity of the sentiment on a day-to-day basis.
Participative Practice
A consultation with a doctor should not be a monologue or a question & answer session and it shouldn’t end with the patient receiving only a prescription.
When a patient enters a medical facility, he is already anxious about a million different things. Simply giving him prescriptions, a formal explanation and instructions does nothing to alleviate this anxiety. A prescriptive method of practice such as this alienates the patient, and induces more anxiety in an already anxiety fuelled situation. We must recognize that it is not only our duty to treat the patient but do our best to alleviate this anxiety and make the patient participate in the process.
Rather than a following prescriptive method of practice where the patient is mostly kept in the dark, and given a set of instructions about medicines and procedures, it is our duty to explain to the patient why they have been given the instructions, what is going on within his body, and why each medicine, each test is necessary to the best of our ability. We must make sure that the patient is onboard with whatever has been prescribed and recommended to him.
This has to be done not just as a formality, but communicated with empathy and compassion.
We have to recognize that the patient is anxious and scared, and do our best to reduce this anxiety to a manageable level. Bringing the patient into the discussion, giving him moral support, trying to understand him and make him participate in the procedure by simply sharing with him all the necessary information can go a long way.
It is not just the patient who has the right to know these things, but also those close to him. This can only be achieved if we assume intelligence from all our patients in the first place. Even if we do not provide the necessary services to treat his condition, it is our duty to guide and direct them to a dependable source where they can get the required treatment. Our people at Invocure should always remember to treat patients like they would treat their own close ones.
Patient Centricity
We must always keep in mind that the patient is not just a number on a spreadsheet, a number on the medical documents. He is not just an object of study, a subject for observation. He is a real human being with feelings, hopes, dreams and fears. Taking an individualised & holistic approach, taking into consideration the family, the circumstances, the culture is the key to having a high level of patient satisfaction.
No matter what the external circumstances that surround us, we must always maintain an adherence to and pursuit of patient-centricity in our operations. This can only be attained if we take a granular approach to each patient. It can be very easy to track operational and functional metrics of performance and get carried away by them, but if we do not realize time and again that our operations have to be centered around the patient, then the other performance metrics may not mean much. The goodwill built with the patient and his loved ones is likely to be the single most valuable asset to our company in the future. To build that goodwill, we must be in constant pursuit of making our operations centered around the person who we are treating and serving.
It is imperative that each patient’s case is looked and met with in as granular a way, as possible. If a patient recommends invocure to his friends or family members due to his own good experience with us, it is the highest level of success we could possibly attain and the highest compliment that can be paid to us.
Innovating care models for the community
The need to innovate to succeed in today’s world is obvious. But it has to be contextualized. It is no secret that our society has shifted massively to rely on technological sophistication in every area of life. But what we must understand is that technological sophistication and innovation are not ends in themselves. A blind pursuit of innovation for its own sake hardly leads to any meaningful destination for an organization.
It has to be in service our values and ideals and it must be subservient to our ultimate purpose of serving our communities.
We must always keep in mind that any innovation, technological or otherwise, is a tool and a means to nobler, higher ends. Innovation of care process or ideas are equally important, as is technology. Merely following the market is likely to get us nowhere. It is our duty to bring together solutions and services that are put together in an imaginative manner that work brilliantly in the pragmatic reality of the medical world. Moreover, Innovation is not necessarily just technological in nature. Any solution, service or product put together in an imaginative way that solves a certain problem brilliantly, is an innovation.
We at Invocure understand that technology and innovation must always be in service of and subservient to our values and our purpose. Not technology for it’s own sake, not to follow what the market is doing but to supplement our values and help bring us closer to our ideals and purpose.
Operational Integrity
When we enter this line of work, we have at our hands a huge responsibility to society. It is vital for us to realize how important it is that we be driven by a genuine inspiration to be in service to humanity more than anything else. That we are here to make a valuable contribution to society through our services, products and the way in which we conduct our business.
Uncompromisingly upholding the principles of medical ethics even in the smallest of interactions with our patients is an absolute prerequisite for achieving this. It is imperative that we see to it that a standard of integrity and quality be maintained at each level of the organization in each type of service and in each interaction with our patients. No matter what the situation of the company, we must take great care to never sacrifice these.
We cannot grow or sustain any of our operations if we do not provide quality on a consistent basis to the patients. Just providing consistent quality is not enough, however. Providing quality services while maintaining a high level of integrity is crucial. We always have to keep in mind that we are dealing with human lives, something that is priceless. When the patients and their families are trusting us with their lives, it is our duty to make sure that the quality of our services is maintained with integrity and honour throughout each level of the operation.
Transparency in everything we do
The long-term success of our enterprise will be largely dependent on the trust we build with our patients. Among other things, that trust will not be built without transparency. To build a successful organization that makes a valuable contribution to society, we must maintain transparency through and through in everything we do. This starts with keeping the patient involved all the way through the process without alienating him.
Furthermore, it must be brought home that without making apparent the practical aims of adequate profitability, growth and productivity to our patients and associates, we cannot sustain our commitment to our more idealistic aims in the long-run. Our pragmatic aims must be brought into clear light in order to make possible the achievement of our idealistic aims. If the pragmatic reality of the business world is ignored, then it simply will become impossible to preserve our commitment to our ideals and purpose. If on the other hand, we lean in the direction of focusing too much on the pragmatic side, we risk losing the trust patients place in us.
We have to pursue our aims without losing our values. And for that, maintaining transparency in everything we do is key. As Jim Collins says:
“Visionary companies don’t see it as a choice between living to their values OR being pragmatic; they see it as a challenge to find pragmatic solutions AND behave consistent with their core values.”
– Jim Collins.
We do not see it as two different choices to pursue profits & growth, or to pursue our ideals. We see it as a challenge to always find pragmatic solutions and behave consistently with our core values.
