Home health care service provider, Health Care at Home India (HCAH) has partnered with top global pharma companies in India to conduct patient support programmes like drug reminder services and drug infusion services to improve compliance of the drug at the point of care in the comfort of home.

Having served over 3 lakh customers over a period of over two years, HCAH is a joint venture backed by the Burman family (promoters of Dabur, India), and the founders of the Health Care at Home, UK.

These services also involve patient assistance programme where the pharma companies offer drugs at discounted rates to customers based on the medical condition of the respective patient. HCAH has also been offering services ranging from routine procedures like injection administration to home chemotherapy, home ICU services and even maternity services pre and post natal through its toll free number 1800 102 4224.

Says Vivek Srivastava, chief executive officer, Health Care at Home India Pvt. Ltd, "Globally home healthcare is 3 to 6 per cent of their respective healthcare market and is growing 2 to 3 times of overall healthcare industry. Some of HCAH’s unique services include- setting-up ICU at home, home cardiac care, home oncology services, post surgical care, home pulmonology services, home physiotherapy services and home nutrition services.”

"To follow the highest quality and clinical standards, HCAH’s processes are benchmarked against those of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), an independent regulator of health and social care in UK. To hire competent and highly certified health care professionals, HCAH provides rigorous training and simulation based tests for up to 6 weeks with the support of Berkeley Health EDU," he added.

Roughly 5000 visits in a month are carried out by HCAH. Price of services range from Rs. 500 to Rs. 20,000 per day. ICU and oncology based services are 50 per cent cheaper than those provided in hospitals. Roughly HCAH services are 60 per cent cheaper than the respective services in hospital. With regard to long term care, readmission rates and hospital acquired infection, home care is roughly 90 per cent cheaper than the hospital care.

He further informed that HCAH is expanding rapidly and will be in 35 cities by 2017. Currently, the services are present in Delhi NCR, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, multiple smaller cities in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. HCAH has been launched in Mumbai and plans to launch in Bangalore and Hyderabad. The company aims to be Rs. 10 billion company in five years.

The company is in preliminary discussions with a few investment funds to initially raise about Rs. 100 crore. The home healthcare service provider also plans to raise another Rs. 200 crore (about $30 million) by the end of 2018. The funds being raised would be used to expand its reach to 40 cities by 2018. At present, the company is present in India and is also looking at expansion in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Indian Healthcare market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17 per cent between 2014 to 2020 to USD 280 million. By 2020 as compared to global averages, India will need 7.5 lakh hospital beds and 1.8 lakh physicians and USD 40 billion.

Home Healthcare can meet these challenges as it is asset light, takes less time to go to market and has appropriate resource allocation. Majority of patient requirements can be met by nurses freeing up physicians to do more value added jobs. Home Healthcare also provides added advantages of clinical safety, enhanced recovery due to almost zero cross-infections and lower re-admission rates, patient convenience with zero traveling and waiting time and lower costs. Long term healthcare costs are even reduced to 10 per cent as compared to hospitals.