At admission, LifeSpring provided us with a rate estimate and at discharge, we paid the same amount. We were really happy not to pay anything extra… from ayah to nurses, receptionist to doctor, everybody took a lot of care of my daughter and her baby”
Innovations in Maternal and Infant Health Address Chronic Problems Creatively PBS NewsHour September 12, 2011
Blurb : Project: LifeSpring, India
Low-income women in India usually have two choices for maternal care and child birth: wait in long lines at overcrowded government facilities or risk breaking the bank by paying for private care. Seeking to provide a middle-ground alternative, LifeSpring developed a chain of hospitals for women who earn about between $3 to $6 a day that provides an all-inclusive maternal care package for about half or one-third what other private facilities might offer.
The facilities cut costs by using a no-frills environment, and by breaking down complex processes into different tasks, some of which can be done by less-skilled professionals.
LifeSpring Hospitals, an Indian chain, has used standardized procedures, borrowed from manufacturing, to reduce the cost of delivering a baby to $40, a fifth of the cost at comparable local hospitals.
The bigger innovations are happening at the other end of the economic spectrum, closer to the bottom of the pyramid. One such is unfolding at LifeSpring Hospitals in Chilkalguda , Secunderabad
Specialization also allows for higher utilization of physicians and a narrower range of supplies. LifeSpring’s services cost 65% to 80% less than private-sector options.
LifeSpring tries to bridge the yawning gap between the substandard maternity services offered by underfunded public hospitals on the one hand and expensive ones available in private hospitals on the other.
Good Morning America featured the work of LifeSpring, a hospital chain in India, bringing high quality, low cost maternal care to poor mothers in India.
LifeSpring Hospitals has signed up to the Business Call to Action (BCtA), a UNDP supported global initiative challenging companies to apply their business expertise, technology and innovative spirit to tackling poverty aneed accelerating progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Innovative business models such as LifeSpring Hospitals are helping to make real, sustainable progress by providing women with quality, low-cost healthcare
Is it really possible to build enterprises that focus on providing critical goods and services to 600 million people living in low income communities in India at both a high quality and low cost and at a large scale? We believe it so.
What's perhaps more astonishing is the fact that LifeSpring is profitable. The Moula Ali unit became profitable in two years. There are several reasons for it. Kumar says most LifeSpring hospitals are taken on long leases (15-20 years), from players who couldn't run them.
Hyderabad-based LifeSpring Hospitals uses CRM to track customers real time…For LifeSpring, the biggest benefit has been automation and generation of a database over the Web.
LifeSpring’s business model is one-of-its-kind; it aims to serve as a model for providing high-quality maternal and child health services to the poor in India as well as worldwide. It has wisely chosen an unserviced customer group and high prevalence need – pregnancy – to base its business on. The hospital focuses on a particular niche of maternal health and achieves high quality within that niche through its process-oriented methods. This is its most important differentiator, and has contributed immensely to its success.
LifeSpring targets lower-income Indians who previously had to choose between overburdened government hospitals or private facilities far beyond their means. The idea for the model ironically came from Hindustan Latex, the public sector company that is the world’s largest maker of condoms. It is a big change for Anant Kumar, chief executive of LifeSpring. His work has gone from “trying to stop babies to having more babies”, he jokes.
Champions of market forces are a glum lot these days, for the most part. But not Jacqueline Novogratz, a market-minded development expert. The current crisis in capitalism, she believes, strengthens her call for a sweeping change in how the world tackles poverty. “The financial system is broken, yes, but so too is the aid system,” she observes. In her view, “a moment of great innovation” could be at hand… Acumen’s charges are a diverse bunch. In India, Drishtee runs a network of internet kiosks in rural areas, while LifeSpring runs low-cost maternity hospitals.
Acumen Fund India, too, has leveraged the co-investment model well by partnering with the government-owned Hindustan Latex Ltd to invest in LifeSpring Hospitals Pvt. Ltd. As of now, LifeSpring Hospitals runs six 20-30 bed hospitals in Hyderabad and coastal Andhra Pradesh.
In December 2005, when Anant Kumar set up a hospital offering maternity and childcare services in Hyderabad targeting low-income customers by pricing services at about a quarter of what other hospitals charged, it was an instant success.
LifeSpring’s doctors perform four times as many operations a month as their counterparts do elsewhere—and crucially, get better results as a result of high volumes and specialization. Cheap and cheerful really can mean better.
LifeSpring will open 30 hospitals and franchise another 140 in the next three years. “We like to see a financial return, but we’re not profit-maximising – that’s the differentiator. We believe that you don’t have to maximise profits to be profitable. In every one of our projects, we want to see a million people impacted over a five to seven-year time frame.”
Hindustan Latext Ltd. (HLL), which has been awarded the mini "Ratna" status, has formed a joint venture with Acumen Fund of the United States to provide quality health care at affordable rates to low-income groups in rural areas.
The first five LifeSpring hospitals will come up in rural and semi-urban pockets of Andhra Pradesh, and more are planned in ajoining Karnataka and Maharashtra states. The unique aspect of LifeSpring Hospitals is that patients will be charged about 30 to 50 per cent that of the prevailing rates at major institutes.
Established jointly by Hindustan Latex Ltd and Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust, [LifeSpring Hospitals] will be a part of the of high quality hospitals for providing quality healthcare. HLL and HLFPPT have chalked out an ambitious plan to set up such hospitals in more than 500 districts by 2010.
Hindustan Latex Ltd is establishing a network of hospitals at rural and semi-urban areas in the country as part of its diversification plans. HLL will set up hospitals in 500 villages by 2010. The first such hospital was set up in Maula Ali, Hyderabad.
HYDERABAD: In a new initiative to provide maternal and child healthcare at an affordable cost, the first of the LifeSpring Hospital network in the country was launched at a semi-urban locale, Moulali, near here, by Union Health Secretary P. K. Hota on Saturday.
With a view to offering quality and affordable reproductive and child healthcare services in rural and semi-urban areas, a trust set up by Hindustan Latex has kicked off a nationwide hospitals network with the brand name LifeSpring Hospital, through franchisee route.
