Predicting Timelines in Healthcare Infrastructure Projects: Learnings From an Apex Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in North India

Aim Healthcare infrastructure projects are a requirement for the progress of the country. The aim of this study was to identify major completed healthcare infrastructure projects in a tertiary teaching hospital in Northern India and to find out the various factors that influenced the success or failures and the cost and time overrun during the project implementation. Materials and methods Periodical review meetings were conducted, right from the planning to the execution and commissioning of these projects. All these had been documented as minutes of the meetings, and the records of the same had been maintained. The study comprised of studying all these documents in detail and finding an answer to the research questions. Results Four major completed projects of a tertiary medical institute of India, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India, were studied. These were the new Outpatient Department (OPD) Block, Burns and Plastic Surgery Block (BPS), Maternal and Child Health Block (MCH), and National Cancer Institute (NCI). Our study revealed that there was no dearth of funds, and hence, there was no cost overrun in any of the projects. Whenever the funds had to be reworked, the funds that were asked for were released. However, there was a considerable time overrun in all the projects ranging from about one to four years. The various reasons that could be attributed to this are the delay in obtaining statutory clearances, political interference, communication hurdles, improper planning, introducing a project officer late into the project, safety concerns, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions This study focuses mainly on the very important hurdles that were faced during the implementation of the projects and tries to suggest an average time frame for various activities for project implementation in a healthcare project in the Indian scenario. This can be taken as blueprints while planning newer healthcare projects of this magnitude.