By Naveed Rozais
Healthcare can often be a stressful experience, even aside from the anxiety that going to the hospital can mean for many. Hospitals are often overcrowded, which can make them less comfortable and also feel like the attention and care you receive is somewhat divided, especially if you are visiting for a matter of wellness rather than health.
What do we mean by wellness? In the context of the Ninewells Family Wellness Centre, wellness is all about the non-essential healthcare that keeps you feeling your best – from screening to checkups to channelling doctors for the little things that don’t require the pressure of a full-on hospital visit.
Launched in September 2022, the Ninewells Family Wellness Centre at 74, Flower Road, Colombo 7 is designed to offer customers the experience of comfort, convenience, serenity, and exclusivity for a diverse range of wellness needs away from a traditional hospital setting.
The Family Wellness Centre has five channelling rooms for consultants and staff doctors and cutting-edge ultrasound technology for expectant mothers (at its core, Ninewells will always remain a trusted name in maternal and paediatric health). “The idea is to move away from the traditional hospital setting into a more pleasant and relaxed environment,” Ninewells Hospital Business Development Manager Srimath Welivita shared with The Sunday Morning Brunch.
The range of services at the Family Wellness Centre includes vaccinations, scans, laboratory facilities, OPD, child and maternity consultations, fertility and gynaecology consultations, a pharmacy, wellness medical screening, sports medicine and physiotherapy, nutrition and weight management. A focus is also paid to providing care to elderly clients in a more relaxed non-hospital setting, with a range of packages available for checkups and other wellness services.
“We have a staff of OPD doctors on call as well as a system to collect samples for lab investigation which are dispatched regularly to our main labs for full testing and reports,” Welivita said, adding that these doctors were more than equipped to handle minor cuts, wounds, and consultations with transfers to one of Ninewells Hospital facilities provided in case of emergencies.
The Family Wellness Centre also allows for mental wellness with consultant psychologists and psychiatrists visiting the centre and consulting with clients from a private space that has been designed to be up to code with international mental wellness treatment guidelines.
Moving away from the traditional hospital setting, the Family Wellness Centre is not only designed to be flooded with light and create a welcoming, comfortable atmosphere similar to that of a hotel, but it also encompasses a host of associated services and products to create a unique experience for its clients, as well as serve as a calming space even for those accompanying others on their trips to the centre.
Amplifying the overall patient experience, the Family Wellness Centre is also geared with a spacious, chic, and comfortable lounge area, a mini theatre for kids, and a cafeteria. Moreover, the facility houses a mini supermarket by Luxe Colombo, a mom-and-baby shop by Pippin, a bookstore by MILK, and visitor hot desks for working professionals.
The Family Wellness Centre is also conveniently designed for all services to be offered on a single floor for ease of movement and approaches the service aspect of healthcare completely different to a hospital. Whereas in a hospital, patients need to report to a channelling desk and then often need to move from pillar to post, at the Family Wellness Centre, a patient needs only to walk in, take a seat, and wait for one of the centre’s executives to come to them and find out how they need to be served.
“You can walk in, sit down, and they will come to you,” Welivita explained, adding that the service the centre offered hoped to emulate that of hospitality and that this was what the centre hoped its clients would feel when visiting; that they are visiting their favourite hotel or restaurant.
The Family Wellness Centre has also striven to create a premium health and wellness centre that can still stay relatively affordable, with Welivita noting that the services at the centre, while offered at premium prices, were not significantly more expensive than those services would be at a Ninewells Hospital.
Commenting on the launch of the Ninewells Family Wellness Centre, Ninewells Hospital General Manager Tharanga Weerasuriya summed up the vision of the centre: “Family Wellness is an exciting novel concept by Ninewells and bears testament to our agility to innovate and stay abreast with an ever-changing industry. As the leading woman and child care hospital in Sri Lanka’s private sector, we are now dedicated to bringing wellness closer to our customers’ homes while breaking away from the conventional hospital and institutional experience.”