Evercare: Making Nigeria a Destination for Inbound Medical Tourism

Evercare Hospital Lekki officially commenced operations of its 165-bed, purpose-built, multispecialty tertiary care facility in March 2021. With the hospital’s range of specialty services, it is positioned to be a trusted healthcare partner and preferred destination in Nigeria and the West African sub-regionI. In this interview, Evercare’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ayo Shonibare speaks on the hospital’s offerings, strategy for curbing medical tourism as well as leveraging technology for quality healthcare services. Chiamaka Ozulumba brings excerpts

Evercare Hospital has now started operations. Can you briefly tell us about the hospital?

Evercare Hospital Lekki is a 165-bed, purpose-built, multispecialty tertiary care hospital. We offer care across a range of specialty medical and surgical services. The hospital is a member of the Evercare Group, an integrated healthcare delivery platform operating in growth markets across Africa and South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria. Evercare Group’s portfolio includes 30 hospitals, 16 clinics and over 75 diagnostic centers.

Evercare Hospital is wholly owned by the Evercare Health Fund, a US $1bn emerging markets healthcare fund managed by The Rise Funds and the impact investment platform of global alternative asset manager TPG.

What specialties and services does the hospital offer? Can you also share your unique value proposition?

Our facility in Lekki Lagos is a multi-specialty tertiary care Hospital with 165 inpatient beds and over 20 daycare beds. Evercare Hospital aims to be at the forefront of advanced clinical care in major specialties, including Mother and Child, Cardiac Sciences (including Interventional Cardiology and Cardiac Surgeries), Oncology (Surgical and Chemotherapy), Minimal Access Surgeries (Neurosurgery, Orthopaedics, General Surgery, Paediatric Surgery, and Gynaecological Surgery), Critical Care (Adult, Paediatric & Neonatal) as well as Emergency & Trauma amongst other services.

Our unique value proposition revolves around the provision of quality and accessible healthcare with a team of qualified, well trained, and experienced doctors and consultants. The hospital harnesses technology as the future of healthcare and makes best use of technological developments to provide effective services to enhance quality of life, diagnostic, and treatment options.

What impact will Evercare Hospital have in Nigeria?

The hospital is determined to significantly improve the healthcare sector by focusing on delivering value based, accessible, high quality care that will focus on tertiary care. We will constantly innovate to ensure the delivery of best-in-class standards of patient safety, clinical excellence, and outstanding clinical outcomes with an unparalleled patient experience.

Finally, with our team of dynamic and passionate team of caregivers, we are looking forward to transforming healthcare in Nigeria.

The Nigerian Healthcare system is losing over $1 billon dollar to outbound medical tourism. How is Evercare planning to tackle outbound medical tourism and provide quality healthcare to Nigerians?

Nigeria is one of the top contributors to the global medical tourism spend estimated at US$1.0-1.5bn annually with an average of 30,000 patients travelling abroad annually for healthcare services. With over 40% physician migration, Nigeria is also one of the leading African sources of foreign-born physicians.

With our state-of-the-art, multispecialty, tertiary care hospital, the first of its kind in the Nigerian private healthcare sector, Evercare Hospital Lekki seeks to reverse this trend making Nigeria a destination for inbound medical tourism across the West African region and beyond.

Also, leveraging on our access to the global Evercare platform, as well as a group of experienced Nigerian doctors in the Diaspora, we have developed a robust plan for local and international training of our doctors, nurses, and allied staff.

How will you describe doctor-patient relationship at Evercare Hospital?

Essentially, at Evercare Hospital, we recognize that Doctor-patient relationship is a foundation of clinical care which should be built on trust. We believe that every individual has the right to respectful and compassionate care. We have introduced our doctors to a framework for patient experience, encouraging each caregiver to treat every patient as they would treat their own family.

Our caregivers are passionate about providing patient focused care and this reflects in their attitude to the patient’s overall experience at the hospital.

One of the areas of complaints by the public about healthcare in Nigeria is that it is relatively expensive. How is Evercare responding to these challenges to make healthcare more accessible?

Through our scale, platform, access and innovative blended financing solutions, the hospital seeks to over time drive down the cost of healthcare delivery thereby increasing accessibility to quality healthcare. Our tariffs were carefully curated to ensure the pricing of services are highly competitive and, in most cases, outrightly lower than our competitors.

Additionally, Evercare has partnered with a few local and international health insurance companies) to ensure care is provided to cash paying patients as well as patients with health insurance cover.

What are the main competitive benefits of Evercare Hospital Lekki services?

We have numerous benefits which include but are not limited to focus on exceptional patient experience; best in class diagnostics and medical equipment; experienced doctors, nurses, and medical personnel (local as well as expatriate personnel); access to laboratory, diagnostics, outpatient, inpatient, surgical, dental, optical services all in one location; focus on patient safety and outstanding clinical outcomes; competitive pricing which offers great value for money; offer of Laparoscopic methods of surgery for quick recovery and better pain management; various room options to suit different patient categories; and robust technology that eliminates paper records, saves time and protects patient data.

Can you share some of the quality assurance structures put in place to ensure efficiency at Evercare Hospital to continue meeting global standards?

For us, quality is at the core of the hospital’s healthcare mission and a robust clinical governance process has been implemented to ensure continuous quality improvement and adherence to international standards for ethics and compliance.

What are some of the innovations Evercare Hospital Lekki seeks to harness in the future to improve wellness in Nigeria?

Innovation is at the heart of our operations to simplify processes to improve the patient experience, make best use of resources, provide better value, improve health outcomes, and expand access to care.

We harness technology as the future of healthcare and make best use of technological developments to provide accessible, affordable, and effective services to enhance life expectancy, quality of life, diagnostic, and treatment options.

Does Evercare Hospital have any expansion plans or major projects in 2021 and beyond?

The hospital was only officially commissioned in March 2021 and is the first Evercare project in West Africa.

At the moment, we are looking to establish Evercare as the most trusted healthcare partner and preferred destination in Nigeria and the West African sub-region. Expansion plans may be considered in the future.