Dr H Sudarshan Ballal

Leading Change as a Physician Leader

Dr H Sudarshan Ballal, Chairman, Manipal Hospitals

A CLINICIAN par excellence, excellent teacher and a compassionate physician, Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal, Chairman, Manipal Hospitals, is an influential thought leader in the Indian healthcare industry. As a leader Dr Ballal, evaluates effective strategies to drive organizational change. His work includes building consensus among key constituents to achieve mission and cultural alignment and deploying state-of-the-art change management strategies.

As a young doctor Dr Ballal was the best outgoing student (Blue Ribbon awardee) of the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal and a recipient of many Gold Medals in MBBS and M.D. and later had his further training in the USA and had the distinction of being one of the few physicians with three Board certificates in Internal Medicine, Nephrology & Critical Care. He has the rare distinction of being appointed as Professor of Medicine with St. Louis University School of Medicine (USA) and is also Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Manipal University. He has the distinction of setting-up the first postgraduate training Centre in Nephrology in Karnataka and performed the first cadaver kidney transplantation in Karnataka.

After working as a Consultant in Nephrology and Transplantation at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, he moved back to India to head the Nephrology Unit at Manipal Hospital, Bangalore. Dr Ballal has been with Manipal Hospital, Bangalore ever since its inception as the Director of Manipal Institute of Nephrology & Urology and later served as Medical Director and Chairman of Medical Advisory Board. He is also the Chairman of Stempeutics Research Pvt. Ltd. He was conferred the fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians, London for his contribution in medicine.

Here Dr Ballal talks about navigating the complex challenges facing healthcare delivery and the health care industry as well as his leadership journey.

You have been the Chairman of Manipal Hospitals for the past five years, can you explain how your experiences as a physician helped you become a leader and change agent at Manipal Hospital? I do believe my experience as a senior physician was a great asset in my current role. I could look at the issues impartially from both sides of the table and also it was a lot easier to bridge the gap between the doctors (white coats) and the administrators (blue coats) as the doctors have a lot more respect for one of their own in the post that I am in currently.

One of the things I have noted about you is that you had a clear vision, which is certainly important for a leader, but also for leading a major change effort. Can you talk about setting your vision when you started as Chairman at Manipal Hospitals? A few things that are very close to my heart in addition to the usual business growth that everyone aspires for are: a. Patient centricity – I wanted everyone to know that in our profession “Patient is King” and all our efforts were to make sure

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that the patient was the most important person in our organisation. b. Ethical practice of medicine which is very close to my heart and we make sure it is taken with the seriousness it deserves. c. Work on earning back the trust of our patients and bring back the sacred patient doctor relationship. d. Bring in Postgraduate (PG) training through DNB and other fellowship programs in our hospitals such that we now have one of the largest non-medical college training PG programs in our hospitals.

How did you achieve this vision and what helped you along the way? Fortunately, we have very good people both in administration and among the medical fraternity who also believe in these values and hence it was easy to implement our vision.

What are the biggest changes you are most proud of, that have happened at Manipal under your leadership? There are a lot of things that I’m proud of at Manipal Healthcare, but our expansion in the field of healthcare with many new hospitals across the country without compromising on our values; is something that tops this list. Closely followed by our efforts to make us one of the leading and most sought after PG training centres outside of medical schools in the country. Besides there are a number of changes on the operations side to not only make our hospital more agile but also continue to deliver safe and quality patient care.

How can a physician leader help to advance the quest for improved patient safety and better quality at a lower cost?

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We are very focussed on Quality and patient safety and we have some of the best in the field monitoring it all the time. Unfortunately, quality and patient safety comes with certain costs but we will not compromise on quality and patient safety for the sake of saving costs

Being involved with the Manipal University, are you seeing a change in the way medical students are being taught for the next generation of practicing physicians and leaders? Yes, of course! One of the great achievements of Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) is that we train our students to be independent and not parrot what is taught to them. We also emphasise soft skills and ethical practice of medicine, which is the need of the hour

Healthcare is moving more towards quality metrics, risk arrangements and value-based care. What are your thoughts on these recent developments? There has been a major churning in the healthcare space and the move towards universal health coverage with a launch of Ayushman Bharat has been a game changer. Our challenge is to make this viable without compromising quality and affordability. I honestly believe all across the globe and especially in our country, the focus should be preventive and primary care and creation of wellness rather than treat illness. This is much more cost effective way of making the nation healthy than focus on in-patient and tertiary care

What advice do you have for younger physicians? This is still a great noble profession to be in but has a very long gestation period before you taste success. It is a marathon run and not a sprint. Get into this profession with your eyes wide open and only if you are passionate about what you do and are willing to sacrifice and wait before you achieve success in life.