Sometime in late 1970s, at a glittering Diwali party at business tycoon B.K. Modi’s house anybody who was ‘somebody’ in Delhi was present. Among the guests were two seasoned doctors, Dr K.C. Mahajan and Dr S.K. Sama from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. As they approached the buffet, they came face to face with a young greenhorn doctor who had just come from Medical College Simla to join the upcoming nephrology department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi at a princely salary of Rs 1,400 per month. The two stalwarts quickly sensed the young doctor’s apparent enthusiasm and budding talent for his chosen field. Leaving their dinner plates aside, the two senior doctors cajoled, persuaded and virtually made sure that the young doctor jump the ship to join Sir Ganga Ram. Promises were made—double salary and assurance of an eventful professional life. The young doctor being Dr D.S. Rana, now chairman of Sir Ganga Ram Trust Society.
“When I phoned my father to tell that I had left a government job to join a private hospital, my father grumbled saying I had joined a ‘Lala ki dukaan’! But five decades later, I can look back and say that at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, we pioneered many medical interventions and systems. For instance, in my own field of nephrology, we conducted the first ever successful dialysis and blood transfusion way back in the 80s, saving many many lives in the years to come. All because Dr K.C. Mahajan and his team were great talent spotters. They would pull talented doctors aboard. They would pounce on anyone who interfered with doctors’ work or requirements,” says Dr D.S. Rana, who has been Chairman of Board of Management since 2011.
It is not easy to be a philanthropic trust yet remain a profitable business. It is equally difficult to showcase a healthy year-on-year growth in business while remaining a trustworthy brand. But then, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, the oldest private medical institute in Delhi, had founders who set the bar high.
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Sir Ganga Ram: The gold medallist engineer
The story began in Mangtanwala village of Punjab Province in British India where Ganga Ram Agarwal was born in a middle class family in 1851. In those days when education was scarce, Ganga Ram Agarwal graduated (1873) with a gold medal in civil engineering from Thomson College Of Engineering in Roorkee and got appointed in the Punjab Public Works Department. In times to come, he would go on to become a legendary builder-cum-businessman who built many iconic buildings in Lahore like the General Post Office, Aichison College, Mayo College of Arts, Lady Mclagan Girls High School, Hailey College of Commerce, Ravi Road House for Disabled, Lady Maynard Industrial School, the Model Township and Gulberg Township, Renala Khurdas Powerhouse and the railway track between Pathankot and Amritsar.
Apart from work done for the British government, he also executed a large number of projects for various princely states—the Moti Bagh Palace, Victoria Girls School, the courts and a police station in Patiala. For his services in building the Imperial Durbar in Delhi, he received the title of Rai Bahadur and was appointed Companion of the Order of Indian Empire in 1903. Subsequently knighted in 1922, Sir Ganga Ram was perhaps one of the tallest Indian business figures of the pre-Independence era.
While Sir Ganga Ram’s business achievements are lofty, his vigor and vision in philanthropic entrepreneurship are equally remarkable. In early 1900s, when most Indian businesses confined their philanthropy to religious and cultural arena, he tried to plug the paucity of medical services by starting work on Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Balak Ram Medical College in Lahore. His sons Balak Ram and Sewak Ram decided to carry forward his philanthrophic legacy by creating a Trust in his name in 1929 and completed work on the 700-bed hospital and the medical college adjacent to it. This hospital was imortalised by famous author Sadat Hasan Manto in his story Garland. Despite all the turbulence of Partition and subsequent communal bad blood, the hospital still continues in Lahore with its name unchanged due to reverence by common people.
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Origin of best practices
Right after Partition in 1948, SGRH made a new beginning when Sir Ganga Ram Trust was granted 11 acres land in Karol Bagh area to start with one operation theatre and a 40-bed hospital. While the hospital continued to serve basic medical care to the local community for 20 years, in 1972 the Trust was faced with dark future due to a sizable and ever-increasing financial deficit. The trustees tried many alterations and reorganisation of staff but nothing seemed to work and the hospital reached a point of bankruptcy.
This is when Dr K.C. Mahajan and Dr B.K. Vohra, two consulting doctors in surgery department suggested a bold management and financial reorganisation plan —the management of the hospital be handed over to a freshly created Board Of Management for a period of 15 years in which rights to all the property and equipment will continue to be vested in Trust but all administrative and financial powers will be wielded by the Board Of Management. This was a truly innovative and pioneering formula that had never been tried by any other institute before. Despite tremendous odds and resistance from many trustees, a new Board of Management of 21 founder members was created, with Dr K.C. Mahajan as its chairman and Dr Vohra as the secretary.
This is the period in which Dr K.C. Mahajan and Dr Vohra pioneered many hospital management practices, which continue to be adopted as a virtual blueprint by contemporary hospitals even today. Their focus on doctor training and upgradation of skills, creating an ideal patient-bed ratio system, having a nurse shift management method along with excellent husbanding of financial resources restored the financials of the hospital. In fact, this team managed to secure surplus funds to open new departments, replace old equipment and also reserve 20 per cent beds for poor patients.
In the period 1976-77, the team of Dr Mahajan and Dr Vohra presented an ambitious expansion plan to have 500 beds, started the new paediatric wing, created of Staff Welfare Board, the Ladies Welfare Society, a state-of-the-art computerised tomography and also unprecedented initiatives like first kidney transplant programme in collaboration with private sector.
The Board of Management system pioneered by Dr KC Mahajan and Dr Vohra was so successful that the same system has continued to steer the running of this institute for more than five decades. “Every new management Board takes the milestone further. From a lethargic 40-bed hospital that provided basic clinical input, to what is now a vibrant 675-bed hospital which is delivering state of the art super speciality medical services in 44 disciplines (training and educating next generation of medical practitioners and currently having a batch of 270 students working and learning in a fully functional hospital) we have come a long way,” says Dr Rana who steers entrepreneurial activities of the trust while continuing to teach students and also attend OPD patients.
“More important than anything else, we run an ethical medical institute that has patient welfare at the core of its practices. This is our biggest strength. People’s trust and institute’s credibility are my most important responsibility” says Dr Rana as he looks pensively at the large portrait of Sir Ganga Ram in his chamber.
This article is a part of a series called BusinessHistories exploring iconic businesses in India that have endured tough times and changing markets. Read all articles here.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)