Letters

The performance of hospitals is expected to remain strong going forward, driven by a healthy ramp-up in elective procedure volumes and strong ARPOB levels. Pent-up demand and market share gains for organised players in the high-end/complex surgery space is supporting healthy occupancy levels while the uptick in footfalls at metro centres of hospitals in addition to the higher amount of surgical work is driving improvement in ARPOB.

Overall, ICRA expects occupancy to improve to 62-64 per cent in FY2022 from 52 per cent in FY2021 for its sample set of seven listed hospital companies while ARPOB is expected to expand by 8-10 per cent. Benefits from improving scale, cost-optimization efforts, and ancillary revenues from COVID-19 are expected to support margin improvement for the sample set to 19-20 per cent in FY2022. Further, given healthy accruals and relatively lower debt levels, debt metrics for the sample set are expected to witness considerable improvement in FY2022.

Mythri Macherla, Assistant VP & Sector Head, Corporate Sector Ratings, ICRA

We are developing additional technologies to support our customers and society in the near- and long term. We have been aware that, like most viruses, SARS-CoV-2 would continue to mutate and that effective testing strategies would be a key to curbing the pandemic. In addition, testing plays a crucial role in making informed decisions and reducing transmissions. With this backdrop, our TaqPath Assays are developed to ensure that clinicians, researchers, and public health officials have access to effective tools to accurately detect COVID-19, even as the virus continues to mutate and evolve.

Amit Chopra, MD, India and South Asia, Thermo Fisher Scientific

"In 2021 we saw a significant partnership between the government and the healthcare sector to fight the pandemic as well as in the massive inoculation drive that was undertaken by the nation. The results augur well for this collaboration to continue in the future too. While everyone can be proud of the progress made so far, it is imperative to realise that a lot of work still lies ahead and we should strive to reach our vaccination goals as soon as possible in the new year. Unvaccinated pools of population anywhere in the world is a matter of concern as it could give rise to worrisome mutants and therefore a global effort is required to tackle that challenge. The success of our vaccination drive and India's stature as a leading manufacturer of vaccines could mean that our country would be in the forefront of such a mission."

Our lessons as we enter 2022 is that corona is going to be with us for a while and only corona appropriate behaviour of masking, distancing, hand washing avoiding crowds, mass aggressive complete vaccination, robust public health measures of surveillance, vigilance, testing including genomic sequencing, tracking, isolation and building up a robust healthcare system are the only measures that can save us from this deadly scourge.

Dilip Jose, MD & CEO, Manipal Hospitals

Dr Sudarshan Ballal, Chairman, Manipal Hospitals

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