The most impressive thing about Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital is not the redbrick building or state of the art equipment and not even the cancer treatment specialists, but interestingly it is the hospital information system, a centralised database to administer the entire hospital using any latest tablet. Developed by a bunch of software engineers under the guidelines of hospital administration, the database is detailed enough to virtually control the entire hospital through a gadget. “It has everything from patients’ records to the medication administered by doctors and their condition at different times observed and uploaded by nurses, from their detailed medical reports and their bio-data to the history of the medicine and where it was procured from, so much so that I can virtually run the entire hospital on my tab,” CEO Shaukat Khanum Hospital Faisal Sultan said while sitting in a conference room, demonstrating the software being projected on the front wall through a personal computer. “I’ve just come from a conference call with the Saudis who want to buy this software from us and wanted to see the demonstration before purchasing it for their hospitals,” he said.
Having joined the SKCH in 1995 after graduating from the KEMU and specialising from the US, Faisal became the CEO in 2003, and now reports to the 21-member governing board and the chairman, and heads the medical director and various other heads each responsible for a particular section of the 147-bedded facility. But there are only 24-hour beds for inpatients, with 30 additional beds for chemotherapy in which one bed caters to multiple patients. There are more than 70 lab collection centres outside the hospital. Per the hospital data of last year, 150,000 patients visited the outpatient department, with 7,618 admissions and around 9,500 new registrations. When asked how the administration manages so many patients on so few beds, Faisal’s instant reply was, “By being very efficient! Most of the patients do not need admissions and are managed at home which saves the patients from so many infections, besides there is no place like home.”
To a question on the long waiting list for admissions despite such “efficient” management, he said patients were categorised and prioritised on the basis of the kind and stage of cancer plus the availability of the concerned cancer specialist at the moment. “Ideally, we would want to take in all patients who come to us…but despite all this we still have a limited capacity to handle the menace of cancer and within that we have to efficiently spend our resources which mostly come from donations and zakat,” he said, while showing a slide of the sources of income, which includes Rs 1.2 billion generated by paying patients, Rs 1.33 billion in Zakat, Rs 899 million in donations, while Rs 56 million from other sources all amounting to Rs 4.2 billion for 2011, the figure which was a meager Rs 249 million a decade and a half ago. “Over the years you see the hospital income has increased manifold but the expenditures have also increased…even now we have ambitious projects of building new cancer hospitals in Peshawar and Karachi, with plans to enhance our human resource and technical capacity here in Lahore as well,” Faisal said while moving between different slides about expenditures and donors. When the difference between the income and the expense was pointed out, he said the additional amount is spent on development. “Shaukat Khanum Hospital is not made of the building but of the people working for it…it’s a tough job, continue to support us,” Faisal said before leaving probably for another meeting.
Shaukat Khanum, winning a world cup every day
