Business of relieving the pain

Pain clinic of India Pvt. Ltd. ( Mumbai and Goa )

(Indias first dedicated Chain of Pain Management clinics)
Dr. Kailash Kothari, MD
Director Pain Clinic Of India Pvt Ltd.
Honorary consultant KEM Hospital
Fortis Global and Apollo hospitals
www.painclinicofindia.com , email - info@painclinicofindia.com
Pain is the most common complaint after flu for which patients visit hospital.
Chronic pain is the very common and very poorly treated. The cause is that
chronic pain is poorly understood. This is one of the very big socio-economical
and psychological problems for the patients, their families and society. The USA
data shows that more than 100 billion dollars are spend on chronic back pain
alone.
In India the incidence of chronic pain is 70-75% in one study. Chronic low back
pain is one of the commonest causes of absenteeism from the work and is very
big burden on nations economy.
Following is an interview with Dr. Kailash Kothari, MD (Spine and Pain
management specialist). He is honorary pain management consultant at
prestigious seth GS medical college and KEM hospital, Fortis, Apollo and Global
hospitals in Mumbai. He is editor-in-chief of prestigious Indian Journal of Pain. He
is secretary for Indian society for study of pain, Mumbai. He is one of the leading
pioneer pain practitioners in India with experience of more than 15 years in the
field.
Q What is pain clinic of India Pvt. Ltd. all about and how and what
made you start this company?
Ans - Pain clinic of India is my brain child and I am the director of the company.
Basically I am an Anaesthesiologist by profession and had my pain management
training from USA, Germany and Spain.
In the year 1999 I started one hospital in suburban area of the financial capital of
India Mumbai. I noticed that most patients visiting hospital are having pain as
their prime complaint. Almost 90% times pain brings the patients to hospital or
clinic, I noticed. Due to my training in pain management, I started treating these
patients and found that it made huge difference in improving quality of their life.
Patients going home from hospital were more satisfied than before.
I started exploring this field and found that there were no hospitals in India where
pain management treatments were offered. In the country with 150 billion
populations, not a single dedicated pain clinic was present. That was shocking
information.
At the same time I thought this as an opportunity. I noticed that most back pain
surgeries were avoidable and non surgical options in pain management worked
well for these patients. My findings were also supported by the evidences and
literature available internationally.
I started working on a plan of starting chain of pain clinics in Mumbai which deals
exclusively in Non Surgical spine pain management. I started pain clinic in his
hospital at Chembur and provided state of art international quality pain
management therapies at very reasonable cost. Initially the response was
lukewarm. Doctors never referred a single patient as they thought its a sham

clinic. They thought we all manage pain, what new he will do to manage
patients pain. At that time pain management field was never heard of. In fact
most anaesthesiologist and even top consultants never knew - what pain
management is? On most days I was not having more than 3-4 patients. It was
difficult to break even and continuing business of pain management clinic was
very difficult. It was tough time to pass by!!! But with the patients positive
response and good outcomes more and more foot fall started. In few years the
clinic started making good profit with maintaining the quality treatment for
patients. I continued on his mission and slowly moved towards his dream of
starting chain of clinics.
Our clinic offers state of art facilities in Pain management and physiotherapy with
a goal to avoid surgeries and improving quality of life.
Q So when and how PCI started expanding?
Ans - In 2006 two more clinics started in Kalyan and in Kemps corner. Dr. Prakash
Deshmukh and Dr. Manjiri Ranade who were well trained pain specialists joined.
Dr. Prakash Deshmukh is also a Fellow of Interventional Pain practice (FIPP, USA).
With more clinics more patients were benefited. The clinic started making profit.
He started improving facilities in the clinic. He added physiotherapy centre with
targeted and supervised therapy in these clinic. The results of treatment with
such value addition facilities improved further. With Radiofrequency generators
added to clinic facility better long term therapies for back pain was made
available first time in India.
Q Since awareness was low, How you increased your presence among
common people?
Ans - To improve awareness about such newer and beneficial pain management
therapies for the patients PCI started doing lot of free camps and hundreds of
patients were given treatment. Patients started coming with word of mouth
publicity. General practitioners also started feeling confident about pain
management. They started referring patients and slowly business of pain relief
started getting better and better over 2008-09.
In all centres lot of activities were done to create better awareness. We had Pain
specialists from New York, USA world leaders started visiting our centres from
time to time. They helped in treatment of many complicated and complex pain
patients. This further enhanced PCIs image in society. Print media articles on
pain management now started mentioning PCI as one of leading clinic to provide
pain relief. India Today, Business Standard, Harmony, Indian express, Hindustan
times, Pratahkaal, Navbharat Times, Sakal etc from time to time covered pain
management as important new branch of medical science and PCI as one of the
fron runner company to provide such treatments.
Q - What are the training opportunities at PCI?
Ans - In 2006-07 PCI also started Pain management fellowship programs for post
MD and diploma students. Till today more than 100 fellows are trained. Today
Many of the pain management fellows are leading pain physicians in different
parts of country. PCI trains not only Indian doctors but here foreign specialists
also come for training. Anaesthesiologists, neurosurgeons, orthopaedic doctors
and neurologists are some of the specialist who was trained by PCI in past many
years. The PCI fellowship program is one of the most popular in India.
Apart from these activities PCI also organizes workshops which are called CIPM or
Comprehensive interventional pain management. This international workshop

trains doctors in performing various minimally invasive pain management

procedures. The workshop is considered one of the best in India.
Today under leadership of Dr. Kailash Kothari PCI has a team Dr. Prakash
Deshmukh, Dr. Manjiri Ranade, Dr. Apala Shah, Dr. Utpal Sheth, Dr. Venkatesh
Nevagi, Dr. Nikhil Bhookkar, Dr. Sandeep Pawar, Dr. Srilaxmi Hegde, Dr. Khushbu
Jain, Dr. Ruchika Sood, and other supporting staff.