Health-tech application Practo is moving beyond teleconsultations and doctors' appointments, and on to facilitating secondary care surgeries such as appendectomy, kidney stone removal, and others. In a press release on September 23, the company announced the development, saying that it has already started the service, called 'Practo Care Surgeries' in 6 cities - Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad - and plans to expand to more cities and add more procedures. The move marks a shift for the company from offering purely digital services to digital and physical services. At present, its end-user services include teleconsultation, appointment booking, ordering medicines, and booking medical tests. The company reportedly earns revenue by offering a suite of software for doctors, clinics, hospitals, and diagnostics labs on a software-as-a-service model apart from letting institutions advertise on its platform. What is 'Practo Care Surgeries' ? Practo describes the service as an 'omnichannel healthcare ecosystem for secondary care procedures'. This, according to Practo's website, involves expert surgeons, advanced surgical technology to conduct surgeries, personal care assistants who will facilitate the entire process including post-operative care, and financial assistance with no-cost EMIs, discounts, and support for insurance policies. The company says that it would implement this through partnerships with doctors, clinics, and hospitals. While it is unclear how these 'partnerships' would work, Practo says it has already onboarded 200 surgeons onto its network and conducted consultations with over 5,000 patients in the last three months that it has been operational. These doctors, it says, will have…
