The Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India: in Service for Sight
The Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India: In Service for Sight
1) Identify the key factors that led to Aravind’s success. What was Dr. V’s role in all this? What was the support staff’s role in all this?
Key success factors: The key success factor was to align a great social benefit with a sustainable business model. The conservative financial management with no debt allows sustainable growth. The vision and mission of the organization is well articulated and the collaborators are well aligned with it via spiritual affinity with the cause. The business model of doing treatment for free and having sponsors handling the customer acquisition and transportation costs has proven to be successful. Dr. V’s strategy of providing quality care in less developed areas of the county has avoided competition and given access to an untapped market.
Dr. V’s role: Dr. V’s role is to keep the organization vision and mission alignment. He was also the founder of the first hospital (Aravind) in 1976. Dr. V. ideas also incentivize family and community to work with or participate at the project.
Support Staff role: The support staff plays a pivotal role in the project. By allowing to work at lower wages and by working aligned with the mission of the organization they help keeping productivity and motivation high and costs low.
2) Are there any weakness at all with Aravinds model?
The main weaknesses are: 1) Reducing profitability per patient: The paid patients are growing at a slower rate than the free patients which means that the average cost per patient is increasing (please check exhibit 1 for details)
2) Higher growth of free patients: The number of patients selected for surgery after screening is low and the avg. rate of free patients is higher than the paid patients:
3) Capacity and Utilization problem: The utilization rate of the “Tirunelveli” and at the “Theni” units is low causing higher overhead per patient and “Madurai” unit is
1) Identify the key factors that led to Aravind’s success. What was Dr. V’s role in all this? What was the support staff’s role in all this?
Key success factors: The key success factor was to align a great social benefit with a sustainable business model. The conservative financial management with no debt allows sustainable growth. The vision and mission of the organization is well articulated and the collaborators are well aligned with it via spiritual affinity with the cause. The business model of doing treatment for free and having sponsors handling the customer acquisition and transportation costs has proven to be successful. Dr. V’s strategy of providing quality care in less developed areas of the county has avoided competition and given access to an untapped market.
Dr. V’s role: Dr. V’s role is to keep the organization vision and mission alignment. He was also the founder of the first hospital (Aravind) in 1976. Dr. V. ideas also incentivize family and community to work with or participate at the project.
Support Staff role: The support staff plays a pivotal role in the project. By allowing to work at lower wages and by working aligned with the mission of the organization they help keeping productivity and motivation high and costs low.
2) Are there any weakness at all with Aravinds model?
The main weaknesses are: 1) Reducing profitability per patient: The paid patients are growing at a slower rate than the free patients which means that the average cost per patient is increasing (please check exhibit 1 for details)
2) Higher growth of free patients: The number of patients selected for surgery after screening is low and the avg. rate of free patients is higher than the paid patients:
3) Capacity and Utilization problem: The utilization rate of the “Tirunelveli” and at the “Theni” units is low causing higher overhead per patient and “Madurai” unit is