Sustaining a social enterprise

: Palash Eye Hospital

Introduction
• Palash group was formed as a charitable institution which have its culture deep rooted in the
ideas of Basel Evangelic Mission. The founder was playing a leading role asn a chief decision
maker who got control over all activities. The members of the management consist of retired
people with a service attitude . Founder himself involve in the recruitment process. Mostly those
people were not much cared about the pay cheques as social service was the driving force. And
Palash was not in a position to offer better payments also. The hospital had been functioning on
the basis of interpersonal relationships between the members of the management. The key roles
were being played by Head of the Administrative Services and Head of Medical Services (HMS).
THE MANAGEMENTS

The
administration
Division The Medical
Services Division
The Two divisions
Administrative Division
• Overall responsible for all the operational issues of the hospital
• Headed by HAS – who was a retired chief manager of a nationalised bank with 25 years work
experience .
• Working with the trust for 5 years and also was a trustee.
• He is looked after the general administration of services at the hospital as well as activities in the
outreach programme.
Medical Services Division
• The medical services division was responsible for effective discharge of duties by doctors and
paramedics.
• Headed by a retired doctor with 20 years experience
• He is working with Palash for past four years.
Work Force
• Doctors - 3 permanent with 10 years association with Palash , 8 doctors worked on an annually
renewable contract .4 visiting doctors and 3 doctors with diplomas (general health care)
• Nursing staff 31 nurses out of which 23 had been serving in the hospital for at least 4 years and
some of them had been with the hospital since the time of its establishment. New entrants into
nursing - 8 nursing assistants
• The paramedical staff
lab technicians -2, working for 5,10 years respectively
• Refractionist- 16 with 1- 2 years work association The chief refractionist and the senior
refractionist had been working in the hospital for the last 5 and 3 years, respectively. Atrition is
highest among them
• people employed in the pharmacy 2)
• optical shop 20 .
• The pharmacist and medical shop in-charge were serving the hospital for 10 and 5 years,
respectively.
• 11 people employed in administration had a work experience of 5 to 10 years with the hospital
The issues
• HAS was not satisfied with the present day working as the involvement of Chairman in
each and everything according to him is not suitable for an organisation of this size
• Lack of professionalism
• No career path.
• lack of formal guidelines for carrying out daily activities and the absence of performance
parameters.
• Often the job responsibilities were not related to the skills and expertise.
• Paramedical staff complains that even after working for 10 years in the hospital they had
not been rewarded with career advancement and recognition.
• Increased attrition rate .
• The doctors were not provided a role in the administrative matters of the hospital.
• In spite of their reputation and standing, they were not involved in decision making
related to several issues that affected performance and efficiency of the hospital
• The work hours is not matching with the competitors work hours.
• Trust and Society members were against providing administrative control to the medical
division.
Come out with a complete job description for the position of Manager
(Customer Relations) including all aspects that should be covered in a
job description
• There needs to be a customer service manage for Palash hospital who should have some more
people working under him /her to cater the needs of the patients .

• There should be people reporting to HMS as they will be able to understand the requirements
and kind of formalities patients need to undergo as per the medical team

• There needs to be people who are working for the administrative side as that is also important as
admin impact can't be undermined in a hospital

• People who are paying will demand better facilities and easy procedures so that side also need to
be taken care .

• So the CR manager should work as a connecting department for all the customer facing activities .
Job description
• Maximizes customer support by providing help desk facilities especially when the work hours are
not in par with competitor .
• He or she needs to be a problem solver with affinity towards resolving problems.
• CRM needs to ensure that customer service requirements are met adequately which can be
analyzed through maintaining contact with customers, visiting operational environments;
conducting surveys; forming focus groups; benchmarking best practices; analyzing information
and applications.
• Create a culture of “ Customer First “
• Training and development of team members with special aim to make sure that a llprocesses and
systems are followed.
• Escalation management
• Driving process adherence as per defined standards
• MIS and reports
• Inter departmental coordination
Job Description and change in reporting
structure
• Preparing the schedule during pre-handover & handover timing.
• Regular internal audits for the processes and documentation of the CRM activities.
• Establish, maintain and expand the clinics customer base by building and promoting strong, long-
lasting customer relations
• Ability to resolve Customers/Clients/Insurance Company queries by Email/Telephone/Personal Visit.
• A go getter who took initiative to Improves customer service quality results by studying, evaluating,
and re-designing processes;
• Establish and communicate service metrics; monitoring and analyzing results; implementing changes.

• The reporting can be allocated on a proportionate basis that is HMS and HAS needs to know about
the way CRM works .