Every individual and every family wishes that there be no sickness among close relatives. Well, it is something which goes without saying. It equally goes without saying that hospitals are to be visited even if one does not long to visit.

I have been destined to visit and closely identify with the hospitals I visit for a period of days in occasions more than once during the last decade or so.

In as much as I pray that the necessity of visiting hospitals does not become a frequent reality, frequent visits for serious cases of my dear ones have been the reality. In the process, I have had the opportunity of observing the functioning of the leading hospitals in the State and the behavior of doctors.

Individuals and aggregates: Individuals are the foundation of any organization. It is the competence and efficiency of the individuals constituting the organization that would decide the ultimate quality of an organization.

But it is equally important that the individual brilliances in an organization support and supplement each other. There are cases where an organization may possess wonderfully brilliant people at individual levels, but when it comes to teamwork it could be a big zero.

These are cases when the individual brilliances would not be converted into aggregate brilliance. In other words, despite the individual brilliances the aggregate performance may be just a failure. We would call these aggregate reversals. In these, the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

As compared to these cases, we may posit the cases of aggregate enhancements. Here we can visualize two cases. The first best scenario would be one when the organization is not only peopled by individuals of wonderful brilliance, but the resultant teamwork also turns out to be even more wonderfully brilliant.

The second scenario would be the case of not so brilliant individuals, but wonderful aggregate effort. These are cases of aggregate enhancements. In these cases, the coordination, support and appreciation of each other in the organization is such that the whole is much more than the sum of the parts.

RIMS and Shija: With the above understanding of aggregate enhancements and aggregate reversals, I would like to give my own personal assessment of the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) and the Shija Hospital Research Institute (SHRI). Whatever opinion I express here is based on my own personal experiences, and the possibility of differentiated personal experiences is not discounted.

RIMS is a very prestigious medical institute, and its competence is already established. It is also true that it is a medical college where most of the most competent human medical capital in the State is housed.

When it comes to serious medical cases, but not requiring the coordination of varied specialists, we can hardly think of an alternative to RIMS. It is a college with undoubtedly brilliant medical professionals.

However, when we have a case of sickness where coordination and collaboration among different specialists, we do run into road-blocks. But these roadblocks are very costly to the patient in terms of survival. Indeed RIMS is a clear example of aggregate reversals in the sense of presence of many individually brilliant medical personnel, but less than potential coordination among the different specialists.

SHRI is another hospital in the State increasingly establishing the worth of her presence. It is an organization smaller than RIMS, and it does not enjoy the richness of funds and personnel of RIMS.

In pure monetary terms, it is definitely costlier than RIMS. But the kind of coordination, collaboration and teamwork SHRI displays cannot be matched by RIMS. The higher monetary cost is much more than compensated by the higher level of services delivered.

In the ultimate calculation of probability of getting recovered and the involvement of taxpayers’ money, SHRI definitely is less costly and less risky than RIMS. In other words, we encounter a case of aggregate enhancements in the case of SHRI.

The Verdict: Having given my own assessment of relative performance of two leading hospitals in the State, we may now legitimately ask as to which one would win in the long run.

Well, as for me and particularly in the context of emerging global scenario, I want both to win. But if the present trend continues, it is aggregate enhancements which would always prevail over aggregate reversals.

A healthy race for supremacy in delivery of medical services is already on in the State.