Hackensack Meridian Health on Wednesday signed a strategic affiliation agreement with Apollo Hospitals, India’s largest private health care system – a first-of-its-kind collaboration that not only will explore and implement innovative health care solutions, but also potentially provide a solution for the coming nursing shortage in the U.S.
The affiliation, which will go farther than any existing relationships between health care systems in the U.S. and an international partner, will leverage the strengths and resources of both HMH and Apollo.
“This strategic affiliation with Apollo represents an exciting opportunity to explore innovative approaches to health care delivery and address critical needs within our communities,” HMH CEO Bob Garrett said.
“By collaborating with Apollo, a global leader in health care, we can leverage their expertise and resources to further our mission of providing high-quality, accessible care.”
The affiliation will initially focus on several key initiatives, including:
- Addressing workforce shortages: By 2030, there will be an estimated exodus of one million nurses into retirement in the U.S. This partnership offers a unique opportunity to address these challenges through international recruitment and training programs;
- Education, training and development: Exploring opportunities for education and training programs, particularly in nursing and other clinical areas, and supporting international recruitment efforts;
- Virtual assistant programs: Evaluating the potential for Apollo to provide virtual assistant programs to HMH, enhancing care administration and efficiency;
- Oncology collaboration: HMH and Apollo oncologists will collaborate in areas such as second opinion consultations, tumor boards, genomic sequencing, Car-T, and BMT;
- Clinical support: Exploring appropriate opportunities for Apollo to support HMH in various clinical areas, including centers of excellence, specialized services, and clinical research;
- Community engagement: Developing initiatives to engage the South Asian community in New Jersey, which has the second largest Indian community in the U.S. Middlesex County has the highest concentration of Indian Americans in the U.S.;
- Knowledge processes: Evaluating opportunities to leverage mutual benefits through shared knowledge processes such as revenue cycle management, human resources, and supply chain processes.
While all of these possibilities are important, none is more important than finding solutions to combat the coming nursing shortage – which is just as dire and important as the coming doctor shortage but not as well publicized.
This was particularly pleasing to Garrett.
Garrett said a potential nursing program would involve nurses from India handling telehealth duties, which would free up more nurses in New Jersey.
“In India, they have a pretty good supply of nurses that potentially could be used to supplement our nursing team at Hackensack Meridian,” he said. “So, we’re going to start in the virtual nursing space.”
Those nurses could eventually come to the U.S. to work. The fact that New Jersey, particularly Middlesex County, has one of the highest concentrations of South Asians in the country, makes the possibility even more realistic, Garrett said.
“We’ll start in places like JFK Medical Center in Edison and expand from there,” he said.
Doing so, will be about more than just a cultural fit.
Getting H-1B visas always has been a challenge. The Trump administration has shown in its first days that the visa challenge could be even more difficult.
Garrett said Jose Lozano, the chief growth officer at HMH, and Apollo have discussed the issue and are confident they can find a path.
“From a visa perspective, we’re exploring multiple roads and multiple opportunities in which we can get them here bedside,” Lozano said, rattling off the traditional H-1B process, an educational route and also a less known L1 visa, which allows entities to move employees from one location to another if certain conditions are met.
“We’re going to be exploring all three and figuring out what is the best, easiest and the most efficient route to get them here,” Lozano said.
Garrett said he is confident.
“We have been talking to the team at Apollo and they are confident we can get this done,” he said.
ROI spoke with Garrett and Lozano about this agreement on a zoom call from India. Here’s more of the conversation, providing more details on the collaboration.
ROI-NJ: You have indicated the discussion started last year at Davos, during the World Economic Forum in which Garrett is a chair in health care. Give us the details?
Bob Garrett: I met one of the senior executives from Apollo, and we had a really good discussion which evolved into: How can we collaborate? That, coupled with the work Jose and others have done in the Choose New Jersey space in establishing a partnership between India and New Jersey, helped it come together quickly.
ROI: Do you anticipate any licensing issues?
BG: No. We have experience doing this. We have taken nurses from the Philippines, from Europe, from Ireland from other places. We know how to do this. And I must say, nurses in India are very similarly trained to as U.S. nurses are.
Jose Lozano: Every nurse that will be working with us, virtual or bedside, will be licensed in the same manner as a nurse from New Jersey. From a licensing and education perspective, you will not be able to tell the difference.
ROI: You mentioned technology opportunities, talk about that?
BG: There’s a lot here. One of the areas that we spent a lot of time talking about and actually observing in India was their remote monitoring capabilities. We have our Hospital at Home program, where our patients are being monitored remotely, 24/7, and other programs. They are very advanced in robot monitoring. I think putting our collective technologies together could be very powerful, both in improving patient outcomes and in enhancing patient’s ability to access care. I think in both spaces, both teams were very excited about that.
ROI: Have to ask, how about AI?
BG: I think there’s some great collaboration we could do on the academic side. We talked about getting our deans together. We talked about collaborating on research, particularly in the AI space. They are very advanced in AI.
We have 300 AI use-case pilots going on at Hackensack Meridian. They have some really exciting AI initiatives going on that I think can really help what we’re doing.
ROI: This is a two-way relationship. Talk about how MHM will help them in India?
BG: They’re not quite as advanced in behavioral health or mental health as we are. There’s a lot here we can help with. And they were very impressed with our genomics program. So, there could be, you know, opportunities there as well. We even have talked about patients in the Apollo system receiving advanced cancer care at HMH, like bone marrow transplants or Car-T cell therapy. I think there could be great opportunities for patients to come from India or for U.S. clinicians, to go back and forth.
This is broad based. It doesn’t preclude us from adding a lot of features to this new partnership.
ROI: This partnership is pretty unique, yes?
BG: There are other health systems in the country that might have international facilities, but in terms of virtual nursing or actually having a partnership with another health system, where nurses and other healthcare professionals are going back and forth, this is unique.
HMH is breaking some new ground here.
