The Correspondent  

Briefs

'Don't go to Lalgarh'

After pictures of soldiers hugging each other after reclaiming Lalgarh from the naxals, Home Minister P Chidambaram has appealed to citizens not to go to the conflict zone. 

“The situation in Lalgarh is sensitive and continued to be tense.  Besides, CPI (Maoist) has called for a bandh tomorrow.  Security forces must carry on their work without distraction.  I appeal to all citizens, especially political leaders, NGOs, and others, not to go to the conflict area,” Chidambaram said.

The state and the central governments have yet to fix responsibility for the lapse.

According to intelligence inputs, the CPI (Maoist) is likely to indulge in violence by mainly targeting security forces. They are also likely to disrupt or attack trains, buses, railway stations or bus stations.  Vehicular traffic is likely to be disrupted in districts where the CPI (Maoist) has a strong presence.

The CPM has called for a 48-hour bandh from Monday in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal.

‘Patient-doctor relationship is strained’

In the world of medical tourism, five star hospitals and increasing consumer awareness, the relationship between patients and doctors has come under tremendous strain.

An element of mistrust has crept in the relationship feels Maharashtra governor S C Jamir.

The governor feels that the sacred trust between the doctor and patient will be restored if doctors are trained to be human and humane and practiced their art with compassion for the patient.

He made these observations after releasing a book ‘The Forgotten Art of Healing and other essays’ written by Dr Farokh E Udwadia in Mumbai on Friday.

Is the real estate picking up? 

Nearly a year after the demand slowdown, the property market sentiments seem to be improving, according to the real estate companies.

Builders across the market segment are claiming that the last two months have witnessed an increase in bookings and interest, ending months of anxiety on cash flows that had led to project delays, and left customers fuming.

Real estate developers, who were battling tight liquidity in the past few quarters, are breathing easier with banks now more inclined to lend.

Property developers in Delhi/NCR are now increasingly looking to create housing stock for middle-income users. Real estate builders realise that demand is a lot more stable in the lower income groups than the higher income groups. These groups have their own income-expenditure dynamics that is not fully exposed to the vagaries of the increasingly globalised Indian economy.

Demand for homes in India has slumped almost half from a year ago after prices more than doubled and the central bank hiked interest rates to calm inflation. But fortunately from the past few months realtors seems optimistic, however, feel that the general sentiments are lifting.

Earlier this week, one realty firm- Saviour Builders - said they received "overwhelming" response to their affordable luxury housing project, GREENISLE in Delhi /NCR .

Director Sanjay Rastogi, said “The real estate sector is gradually picking up and smart customers have already booked their flats reason being the price will definitely go up. As per our analysis 1,000 apartments were booked within 24-hours in this month.”

Saviour Builders' Crossings Republik on the NH-24, Ghaziabad, is spread over six acres, promises to be India 's best ever green real estate project till date.

Rastogi added, “It's not what you make that sells in the market, but it's about making what the market actually wants. This is exactly what we are doing.  And similar sentiments are being echoed in other parts of the country as well.

TCS out of the box solution for patients

TCS has developed an out-of-the-box dashboard that will simplify projects, reduce costs and dramatically shorten time to value related to both hospital administration and patient care. 

Hospitals have traditionally not embarked on end-to-end data warehousing and analysis due to perceived high costs, high complexity and long gestation period. Typical business intelligence projects in other industries can take 12 months for initial results and up to 18 months for completion. In response, TCS’ Provider Performance Insight takes just three to five months to deploy and provides end-to-end solutions for both administrative and clinical processes to enhance patient services and improve strategic decision making.

“The escalating cost of healthcare makes it imperative for all healthcare providers to evaluate efficiencies in every aspect of their business,” said Debashis Ghosh, head of Life Sciences and Healthcare at TCS. “Both patient care and operational effectiveness need to be evaluated, improved and tracked on an ongoing basis and this will be enabled by our solution.”

The dashboard has been developed using TCS’ hBIDS (healthcare analytics framework) and built on the SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius™ software.  The hBIDS framework has a comprehensive list of performance indicators covering most of the operational and clinical areas of a hospital, including customer care and  satisfaction, resource utilization, staff satisfaction, staff utilization, clinical outcomes, and financial measurements. 

The Provider Performance Insight solution provides the following:

• A snapshot of patient care delivery activities
• Effective performance evaluations of patient service  
• Ability to optimize staffing levels to reduce overall cost
• Power to track and trend staffing ratios over multiple periods
• Real-time assessment of overall financial status
• Ability to compare revenue across peer organizations or departments
• Increase revenue across clinical service lines