Often, patients realize that their illness restricts most of their activity in their daily lives, making commuting for health checks and periodic medical advises very difficult. They want to improve on their situation and stay in the comfort of their homes, but they also don’t want to be a burden to their family.
NORMS was born out of a personal necessity when my family went through a difficult time when my grandmother when she was 85 years of age had sustained a fall and fractured her hip, which has become a common danger for elderly who stay alone.
Once she was operated and just ready for discharge she developed some complications, which extended her hospital stay and made her bed bound. This was back in 2004 and we had a very tough time to get things sorted out.
We had to arrange a hospital cot and nursing assistance for her that looked like a herculean task to achieve. It took us about 9-12 months to optimize her home care and make her comfortable. We had to deal with issues of non-availability of manpower, equipment breakdowns, experience levels of staff.
My grandmother had taken a promise from us that we never take her back to the hospital and she wished that she passes away at home with us around. Fortunately we were able to keep up our promise and rehabilitate her and she lived on till the age of 91 and died in 2011 peacefully at her home after seeing 1 grand daughter getting married & 2 great grandchildren coming into the family and blessing them with so much joy.
This experience sowed the seeds in our mind to start an home healthcare company which can be a solution to the problems we had faced. All through this period from 2005 we were continuing to do home visits for patients who were getting discharged from hospitals and patiently learnt the problems the families faced.
This gave us an insight how to overcome problems faced by such patients while discharging, transition of care, progress of home care, troubleshooting of issues and it was a huge learning curve for us that became the basis of our research for this business.
We started NORMS in 2014 with a promise to tackle these issues and provide quality healthcare at home for patients.
Even today every patient going home from the hospital reminds me of my grandmother and she lives on to guide us to look into problems ahead and after transition of care. This empathy and guiding light has made it possible for us to provide these services and make it better day by day and every day is a learning curve for every team member of NORMS.
- Dr. Avinash Rajkumar
Founder and Head of Medical Operations