“Quality Doesn’t Cost a Fortune”: How ABH Healthcare is Reinventing Critical Care in India’s Small Cities

Dr. Bagchi, you’ve been NABH accredited since 2021 and recently received digital accreditation. How do these accreditations translate into better patient outcomes and trust?

“NABH is a marker of standardised care delivery with measurable outcomes and KPIs. For a patient, it is a signal of trust — it tells them they will receive guideline-directed treatment supported by standard operating procedures designed to reduce error and improve outcomes. Internally, it imposes a discipline of continuous measurement: infection rates, medication errors, mortality, turnaround times. We review those numbers and act on them, and that is what actually moves outcomes. Our digital accreditation extends the same discipline to our records — cleaner data, better continuity of care between consultants, and an auditable trail behind every clinical decision.”

Taking Cost Out of Decision-Making

Your hospital has empanelment with 30+ insurance providers including ECHS, Railways, and Ayushman Bharat. How important is this network to your patient acquisition strategy?

“Insurance is the backbone of any healthcare system. It removes the financial question from the consultation — it lowers the burden on the patient and takes cost out of the physician’s decision-making — and that translates directly into better outcomes. Empanelment with 30+ payers gives us a broad patient base across a five-district catchment. We also accept AB-PMJAY patients, which most corporate hospitals in the region do not. As private insurance penetration deepens in Punjab, that benefits the healthcare system as a whole and our hospital in particular.”

A Bed Configuration Born from Necessity

You have 70 ICU beds out of 150 total capacity — that’s nearly 50%. Why the heavy focus on critical care, and how does that impact your revenue?

“We serve a part of Punjab with poor access to standardised healthcare. Health awareness is limited and incomes are modest, so patients typically present late — often when the illness has already progressed to a severe stage. Our case mix is therefore genuinely high-acuity, and ICU demand stays high. The bed configuration is a response to what our catchment actually needs, not a preference.

Commercially, critical care is our principal revenue driver: ICU beds carry a materially higher revenue per occupied bed than ward beds, which is what supports our overall ARPOB of roughly ₹20,000. It is also where our clinical reputation sits — mortality has stayed consistently under 3% despite that acuity, with an ALOS of 3 to 3.5 days.”

Managing Bandwidth, Scaling Quality

Your pathology lab and pharmacy are outsourced to third-party operators. What was the rationale behind this model, and how do you ensure quality control?

“Both were outsourced early on, when the company was newly established and management bandwidth was our scarcest resource. Outsourcing removed that pressure while preserving the margin we had underwritten.

On quality control: an in-house pharmacist oversees procurement, indenting and dispensing to patients; the formulary is approved by management; and procurement is restricted to a defined list of standard manufacturers. The pathology lab is operated by Atulaya Healthcare, one of the largest diagnostic providers in the region, and lab KPIs are maintained to NABH standards.

That said, the rationale has changed as we have scaled. We intend to buy the pharmacy back using IPO proceeds — we expect that to add ₹2–2.5 crore to EBITDA.”

Bringing Tertiary Cardiac Care Home

You performed around 3,000 cardiac procedures since 2020. How has the Cath Lab and interventional cardiology department become a key differentiator for you?

“The cath lab runs at high utilisation. We upgraded to a top-of-the-line GE system in 2023 and have since added capabilities that are not otherwise available in our region — intravascular ultrasound (owned), intravascular lithotripsy and rotablation (on rent basis). That allows us to take on complex coronary work that patients would otherwise have to travel out of the region for, and it is difficult for a smaller centre to replicate quickly. Also, our cath lab already generates a steady stream of cardiac surgery candidates—triple-vessel disease, left main disease, valve cases—that we currently refer elsewhere. Our next step is therefore to open a CTVS (Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery) department, retaining these surgical candidates in-house and converting that leakage into revenue.”

The Diaspora Calling

The government is promoting medical tourism with e-medical visas for 156 countries. Do you see ABH Healthcare attracting international patients in the future?

“I expect it to become a meaningful revenue line as we expand into cities with greater international footfall. The most natural first cohort for us is the large Punjabi diaspora — families with roots here who want standardised, easily accessible care in familiar surroundings, at a fraction of what the same procedure costs in the UK, Canada or the US.”