•Says R.Jolad Hospital’s focus on quality healthcare sustains it

By Chioma Obinna

Forty-one years ago, Dr. Funsho Oladipo established one of the oldest private hospitals in Lagos, R-Jolad Hospital. Since then, the hospital has grown into a multi-specialist hospital in Nigeria.

Recently, Good Health Weekly spoke to the Founder and currently the Medical Director of the Hospital on the vision and how it evolved over the years. He also spoke about the new R-Jolad Plus facility and what it offers. Excerpts:

The start-up

We founded R-Jolad Hospital as our little effort towards resolving the myriad of health challenges plaguing the country’s health sector at that time.

Our vision was simple enough; help people access good healthcare even if they can’t afford it. The path was not easy, but my wife and I, as well as the team, were resilient in making sure we stuck to the vision because we were so passionate about saving lives and providing quality healthcare. We have held on to this vision for the past 41 years since establishing the hospital and this led to us being referred to as the People’s Hospital.

The People’s Hospital

R-Jolad is known as the ‘The People’s Hospital’ because the patient comes first. The goal of building the hospital from the start was to give people in the community and beyond, regardless of their financial situation, access to quality and affordable medical care.

Although it may seem foolhardy, we have developed a strategy that enables us to put the needs of our patients first which is entrenched in all the services we provide within our facilities. We also remain steadfastly committed to ensuring that quality healthcare is both affordable and available to everyone.

Services at the

beginning

We grew the start-up R-Jolad Hospital within the Gbagada axis from a primary health clinic with 10 beds into a 100-bed facility, catering to hundreds of patients daily and delivering an average of 3 babies per day. The services we started with were primary care with occasional secondary care.

We now have 215 beds across multiple locations in Lagos and have grown into a General Hospital providing services in family medicine while specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, cardiology, endocrinology, general surgery, urology, and orthopaedics.

Differentiation from other hospitals

Our focus on quality delivery over the years has ensured the sustainability of the hospital. We stand out among the best hospitals in Nigeria by continually meeting the needs of the communities and patients we serve through innovative services and technologies.

Across our hospital we have specialist consultants, top-notch rapidly expanding facilities and cutting-edge technology, we ensure that people are well taken care of despite the high cost of healthcare.

New initiatives post Covid-19

We recently partnered with AfyA Care, a healthcare investment platform that shared our vision, which also comprised of investors and managers with a lot of experience and capacity in building businesses across several industries including healthcare. That partnership has metamorphosed into a larger vision to transform healthcare in Africa. Today, we are now a hospital group that has grown from 100 beds in one location to 215 beds across multiple locations in Lagos.

We took up the initiative to deliver better services by upgrading our older facilities at Gbagada and Isolo. Last year, we opened the 50-bed R-Jolad hospital at Agege and established our first primary healthcare centre “R-Jolad Express Clinic” nearby at Bariga. To serve many patients brought in from accident scenes, we opened a 4-bed Accident and Emergency Unit in early 2022. We refurbished three operating theatres and connected them directly with medical gas and oxygen through a modern gas manifold system. We are now building an Intensive Care Unit that will serve adults and children. Lastly, in April we opened a new 30-bed facility for the R-Jolad Plus brand.

New Plus-facility

It is a purpose-built facility designed to cater to discerning customers who desire care in a more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing environment, essentially a home away from home. R-Jolad Plus offers a Wellness Clinic through which we are propagating our gospel of preventive medicine. At this new facility, we offer comfortable admission suites, two operating theatres including a laminal flow theatre for neurological, and other advanced surgical procedures and delivery rooms so we can increase the membership of the famous R-Jolad Babies Club!  We also have a physiotherapy suite and an outpatient clinic where we offer access to multiple specialised services at the primary and specialist levels. Our imaging services have been recently boosted by a CT-Scan machine as well as an endoscopic suite.

Workforce over past four decades

R-Jolad Hospital has a team comprising well-trained and experienced Consultants, Medical Officers, Residents, and House Officers. Recently, the hospital was accredited to train both Residents and House Officers by the postgraduate colleges and the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, MDCN, respectively. The partnership with AfyA Care has also availed our workforce of significant training and self-development, which cuts across various departments within the hospital.

Outlook for Nigerian healthcare sector

The future of the Nigerian healthcare sector looks bright because there are ongoing efforts to strengthen the industry. As a developing nation with huge human resources and opportunities for growth, there is immense potential for different stakeholders to participate in the transformation process.

For instance,  institutional investors such as AfyA Care and private equity firms are bringing about much-needed financial resources into the industry with the view to strengthen local capacity and reverse brain drain as well as medical tourism.

For our part at R-Jolad Hospital, we remain committed as the People’s Hospital to deliver the utmost in healthcare at affordable prices while increasing accessibility.