India, Dec 14, 2022: Practo’s appointment booking business that makes it easy for patients to find and book in-person consultations with doctors, has today announced an addition of 9000+ new clinics and hospitals in the last two years. With this new addition across 750+ pin codes, the total number of partner hospitals and clinics in its appointment booking network stands at close to 80,000. More than 94% of new pin codes added were in Tier 2 cities, indicating the company’s growing focus and presence beyond metros.
In addition to that, Practo has also onboarded 12,000+ new healthcare professionals across specialties to its network. With this Dentistry, Dermatology and General Practice are now the top three specialties with respect to the total number of healthcare professionals.
This Industry-first technology that powers Practo’s appointment booking business ‘Prime’ was introduced in 2018. It aggregates healthcare providers’ appointment inventory enabling real-time online scheduling for patients. In the process, it has helped:
● Increase in the total value driven* for the provider network by over 30%
● Increase ease of access to patients by assisting 23% more patients book appointments online
● Increased no. of appointment booked with premier institutions like Max Super Speciality Hospital, Apollo Hospital, CK Birla Hospital, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, Aster, Motherhood, Fortis, Cloudnine and Manipal Hospital, by 25%
Rowel Coelho, Business Head – Primary Care, Practo said, “In all these years, our north star has remained intact – empower patients to make informed choices. Three key levers to solving this are access, quality and affordability. The fundamental problem of getting access to doctors still exists and hence we continue to expand our core business. We’re now geared to solve for quality at primary care; in a similar fashion we did with secondary care through PCS, maybe with greater ownership. Coming months are going to be very exciting as we foray into ventures that deepen our quality efforts.”
Dr Alexander Kuruvilla, Chief Strategy Officer, Practo, “Practo’s journey as a facilitator of changes in India’s healthcare system has been phenomenal. And this expansion in the network is a reflection of the need to further improve and strengthen fundamental healthcare services. While these services have been the building blocks of Practo’s overall business and they continue to grow, we are equally excited to work on more complex problems involving service delivery that enables better quality and help us make all information available to patients transparently. I am very optimistic of what lies ahead and the impact we are going to deliver to a billion+ Indians.”
About Prime
Practo Prime is a technology product for clinics and hospitals which helps them provide an
exceptional visit experience to patients with assured benefits. Prime focuses on helping patients book appointments that offer quality and convenience. Launched in 2018, today, thousands of hospitals and clinics use it to not just provide offline appointment booking convenience to their patients, but for online consultations too.
With Prime, healthcare professionals are able to provide patients with benefits such as low wait times at clinics and hospitals, instant online appointment confirmation 24*7, assured consultation with the booked doctor and free follow-up consultation via chat after the first consult. By bringing convenience, predictability and quality together, Prime has forever changed the landscape of doctor appointments in the Indian healthcare ecosystem.
About Practo
Practo is on a mission to make quality healthcare affordable and accessible for over a billion+ Indians. It is India’s leading integrated healthcare company that connects the entire health ecosystem together – including patients, doctors, surgeons, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, and diagnostics – to generate exceptional value and service for all, especially the end consumers.
It integrates different parts of the patient’s healthcare journey so they can have a seamless experience, right from primary healthcare viz. finding and booking an appointment with verified doctors, consulting doctors online with ETA as low as 60 seconds, getting medicines delivered and lab tests conducted at home, providing health plans to corporates, to secondary healthcare procedures across 20+ specialties. Practo also makes software products that help healthcare providers – ranging from small clinics to large hospitals – digitise and deliver more efficient and higher quality healthcare to millions of patients around the world.
As technology becomes an integral part of healthcare, Practo has also become an essential enabler in helping doctors understand the nuances of managing and securely storing all health data. Practo encrypts all data with 256-bit encryption, uses HIPAA-compliant data centres, and is one of the few healthcare companies to be ISO 27001 certified. Practo is present in 22 countries, helping over 30 crore patients, by connecting them with 1 lakh + verified doctor partners.