Consultancy & Capacity Building
My goal is to spread the Aravind model to every nook and corner of India, Asia and Africa; wherever there is blindness, we want to offer hope.
- Dr. G. Venkataswamy
LAICO works beyond the borders of Aravind to accelerate eye care service delivery through training, capacity building, mentoring and advocacy. Over the past year, LAICO has worked both on developing its own capacity through internal training programmes and has developed innovative strategies to achieve greater impact for its partner hospitals.
LEAP collaborative series
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Mahatma Gandhi Eye Hospital & Research Institute, Odisha
Netaji Eye Hospital, West Bengal
SGVS Eye Hospital, Jharkhand
LAICO’s collaborative series under the banner LEAP, aims to bring about improvements in specific functional areas of eye hospitals through a collaborative method. These collaboratives employ the principles of Model for Improvement, Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles, and continuous process improvement as strategies to achieve partners aims.
LAICO launched its second batch of the LEAP NABH collaborative series on 27th February 2023. Five hospitals that are preparing for entry level certification have enrolled in this programme. The timeline of the collaborative series was reduced from 12 months to 8 months starting from March till October 2023. Gap assessment visits were made to all five hospitals.
Grameen Eye Hospital, Bogra, Bangaldesh
The second batch of LEAP collaborative, aimed at improving the performance of existing vision centres and establishing new ones, came to an end in November 2022. It consisted of four learning sessions, which provided a platform for sharing experiences and best practices among the partner hospitals. A total of 17 hospitals from India, Africa, and Bangladesh took part. LAICO team visited 22 vision centres run by seven partner hospitals and suggested recommendations for improvement. It also assessed the location identified for establishing a vision centre by Grameen GC Eye Hospital in Bangladesh.
The collaborative helped improve the service delivery of 24 existing vision centres and facilitated the establishment of 14 new centres by the partner hospitals. A total of 51,411 outpatient visits and 4,907 cataract surgeries were recorded by existing vision centres, representing growth rates of 27% and 50%, respectively. Additionally, newly established vision centres recorded 13,867 out-patient visits and 612 cataract surgeries, bringing the combined additional cataract surgeries to 2,248.
Project UP Sight
As an ongoing support to Sitapur Eye Hospital (SEH), Uttar Pradesh, LAICO continues to undertake various initiatives both at the strategic and operational levels to strengthen the leadership team, hospital operations and build the HR capacity. Aravind’s doctors were sent to SEH to support the team in performing speciality surgeries. A set of staff went to help with IT system upgrade and electronic medical record implementation; streamline inventory management and operation theatre processes. Aravind’s senior team periodically visited the hospital to see its progress and suggest ways for improvement. LAICO facilitated a goal seating workshop for the entire team of SEH on 15 and 16 February, 2023. Following this, a three member leadership team, Dr. (Col) Madhu Bhadauria, Director RIO, SEH Trust; Dr. (Brig) V.K. Baranwal, Chief Medical Officer, SEH and Deepak Kanade, Chief Administrative Officer, SEH visited Aravind-Madurai during 13-14 March 2023 to discuss institution building and the way forward. Staff of SEH belonging to different cadres were also given training in their respective areas at Aravind.
Capacity building visits
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Eye Foundation Community Hospital, Ijebu, Nigeria
Tulsi Chanrai Foundation Eye Hospital, Abuja, Nigeria
Jorhat Lions Eye Hospital, Jorhat, Assam
Sudarshan Netralaya, Amreli, Gujarat
Sharda Netralay, Dhule, Maharashtra
Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, Cape Coast, Ghana
ACCESS project wrap-up meeting
Aravind Eye Care System has been working with five partner hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa, from Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia and Nigeria since 2012 through the ACCESS Initiative (African Centres of Excellence in Cataract Services). This project was supported by Hilton Foundation through two grants that concludes in May 2023. The final meeting of the ACCESS initiative was held at LAICO from 20-25 March 2023. The team from Nigeria joined the meeting via zoom. A senior leadership team from the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, Ghana and representatives from HCP Cure Blindness also joined the meet.
Curriculum development workshop for patient communication and counselling
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Orbis India has taken the initiative to develop the following four hospitals as regional resource centres to deliver training related to patient counselling and patient communication:
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Dr Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital, Daryaganj, Delhi
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Netra Nirmay Niketan, Chaitanyapur, West Bengal
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Little Flower Eye Hospital and Research Centre, Ernakulam, Kerala
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PBMA’s H V Desai Eye Hospital, Pune, Maharashtra
At the three-day workshop organised from 19-21 December 2022, LAICO brought together experts in the field of patient communication along with representatives from regional resource centres to develop a curriculum for effective patient communication and counselling. LAICO will also help develop a full-fledged training package for the resource centres to carry forward and deliver in their respective regions.
AIOS-ARC leadership development programme
Every year, the Academic and Research Committee (ARC) of All India Ophthalmological Society (AIOS) organises Leadership Development Programme (LDP) for a cohort of ophthalmologists who wish to improve their practice management and leadership skills. In the last year, LAICO conducted this programme on 10 and 11 September 2022. About 30 ophthalmologists who were the participants of LDP 2020-21 and 2021-22 took part. The programme discussed topics such as building a high-performing team; sustainable drivers of revenues and profits; quality and challenges ahead.
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