Dr. Subodh Kandamuthan is the Dean of Training Programs ( Long Duration Programs) Director and Professor of Dr. Kakarla Subba Rao Centre for Health Care Management at ASCI, Hyderabad. He is also serving as the Programme Director of the AICTE approved Post Graduate Diploma in Management (Hospital Management) (PGDHM) program. He holds a master's degree in Development Economics, an M.Phil Degree in Applied Economics and a PhD in Health Economics. He has worked as a faculty in Health Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi, Institute of Health Systems, Hyderabad and as a technical consultant for DFID in Finance and Procurement to the health department of the Government of Andhra Pradesh. 

Dr. Subodh has worked on projects related to Economic costing, and Economic Evaluation of Health Care programmes with organisations like the National Rural Health Mission in Andhra Pradesh, Medium Term Health Expenditure frameworks in Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, and Trade in Health and Hospital services, among others. He is currently the team leader for a UNICEF project on the Concurrent Monitoring of Anaemia Mukt Bharat programme for Telangana in collaboration with NHM Telangana. He has also facilitated an MoU with the State Health Authority of Kerala and is imparting year long online training on Health Economics, Health Financing, and Health Insurance for the health insurance officials of Kerala.

Dr. Subodh won the IDRC Social Science Research Award in December 2009 in the category of Equity in Health. He won the first Australia India Council Research Fellowship in 2004 to do research in Australia. He was also a technical committee member of the Mobile Health technical advisory group of the World Health Organisation. In 2014. He represented India and ASCI at the World Think Tank Summit in Yokohama, Japan, in June 2017 and was an invited expert on Public Private Partnerships in Health to Health workshops in South Africa and Cote’D’Ivoire by the African Development Bank for African countries in 2017-18. He has published papers in national and international journals and has co-authored three books. Moreover, he has attended and presented papers at a large number of national and international conferences and has also visited almost all the states in India and more than 30 countries on professional assignments.

Administrative Staff College of India-PGDHM

What is the latest program that you are offering in the institute or department?

At ASCI, in the Dr. Kakarla Subba Rao Center for Healthcare Management, we are offering a Postgraduate Diploma in Management (Hospital Management) Programme, which is a two-year full-time programme approved by AICTE for the last 18 years. This is a very reputed programme where we get graduates from all over the country, especially with clinical as well as non-clinical backgrounds, who go on to become managers in hospitals, business analysts and Health IT specialists in the healthcare IT industry. They can also become public health specialists and also work in the health insurance industry. There are a lot of avenues for our hospital management graduates.

What are the factors that make this program the best for students to opt for?

Post-COVID, everybody has realised the healthcare sector is an essential sector. A lot of new hospitals are being started and existing hospitals are expanding themselves as well. These hospitals need a lot of well-trained and skilled manpower. There is also a need for managers who will handle the administrative side of these hospitals. This is where we come in. Our courses will teach the students not just the essentials of healthcare but also management topics to thrive in any and all positions in the hospital.

What will you say are the best practices in the course that is being followed in your institute?

In ASCI, the hospital management programme is an AICTE approved two year program with strong connections with the industry. We have fantastic guest faculty who are working in the industry. 50% of our faculty come from industry and they have the knowledge and experience to teach the practical aspects of our courses. Our course is practical oriented and we do a lot of live projects in hospitals and public health. Our students also complete projects for UNICEF and GIZ. We also concentrate on the personality development of the students so that they have the right communication skills and are able to network well. We invite a lot of professionals and experts to our college for our students to interact with.

What are some valuable insights of the program that you are offering at this institution?

This programme has a unique blend of the best students from all over the country. We ensure that they are also placed in various industries. We offer a concentrated practical aspect to our courses. Our students do summer internships where they get a taste of working in the industry. They also work with the different state governments in the health departments. Our guest faculty and internal faculty are highly reputed and experienced and offer a lot to our students. We also offer flexibility in terms of industry-oriented courses. Students can choose from healthcare analytics or data analytics. We also have dual specialisations where the students can opt for hospital management, healthcare, IT, pharmaceutical management, public health systems, health insurance etc. More than 30 hospital and health care companies come for our placements and the track record of placements of our program is one of the best in the country. We have had international placements and internships too.

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How does the program ensure that students are being prepared for the future?

This is a post-COVID era and our entire focus has been to ensure what students can achieve in the next five years. The courses we are covering, whether it be health economics, health financing, financial management, business development or medical tourism, we ensure they have a high scope and are futuristic. We also teach entrepreneurship development and advanced data analytics. These are courses that can teach life skills to students. They can use it all throughout their careers. They may not use it when they get placed, but five years down the line when they become industry leaders, they will be using these skill sets. Our Placements attract the best in the health care and hospital industry

What is the most proud moment in your career so far?

I've been involved in this programme for almost nine years and most of our students who have passed out of the programme have gone on to do extremely well in the industry. Be it in the hospital industry, the healthcare IT industry, or in public health. Some of our students have also gone on to become CEOs of hospitals. Some of them have become senior business analysts in healthcare IT companies, while others have migrated to other countries and built successful careers. Seeing them succeed makes me immensely proud.

What strategy do you employ for building an efficient work team?

We have a two-year full-time programme with a large intake of students from across the country. We usually ensure that we have the right people for the right job, for which we have a very strong admissions team, documentation team, programme team, and placement team. We also have faculty from various disciplines, like Health Economics or Hospital Management. We also have faculty specialising in Healthcare IT and Analytics. Getting the right mix of team members and an ably supported academic and programme team makes our college successful.

What was the most challenging task that you faced in your career so far and what did you learn from it?

In the beginning, it was always challenging to get the right candidates for the programme. A lot of effort was put into improving the quality of the programme. We also wanted to make our students industry-ready. Over a period of time, we realised that our programme had to be aligned with the industry. We made a lot of course corrections over a period of time, which was challenging. Our challenge initially was to always make the college improve the quality of the programmes, which has been done to a great extent at present.

What do you found the most difficult task about being a director?

When you run a program like our two-year postgraduate diploma in Management, or Hospital Management, as a director, the biggest challenge is to ensure that we get the right admissions from pan-India because ASCI is a PAN India organisation. Secondly, another challenge was in terms of placements and increasing the number of sectors our students are placed in because the healthcare sector is a very niche sector. But thankfully, we have overcome that; initially, that was a major challenge to get PAN India students. Additionally, as a director, the other important thing is to get everybody to go forward with a common goal of health care for everybody.