Radiant eye hospital launches website

By Zahara Zuhair
Radiant Eye Hospital is designed in such a way that the patients could relax, with its unique architecture, built using the best methods, according to its founder eye surgeon Dr. Shamintha Amaratunga.
Recently, the hospital officially launched its website at the hospital premises and to commemorate the occasion they conducted an eye campaign completing 25 cataract surgeries free of charge. 
Elaborating on the hospital’s speciality, Dr. Amaratunga said, “The process and the protocols - everything we have gone through in detail. When the patients come inside, right throughout, we will look after them. Even the building is designed to cater to that. When the patient comes inside, it is designed in a way where the patient goes out from back when the process is completed. So the patient does not have to go here and there.”
Though they cannot do a zero waiting time as it is not going to happen, he said that what they do is they give some value for the waiting time.
“So, we are educating the patients while they are waiting – through interactive and television educational programmes – so they can watch and learn,” he said.
He said that they had few machines that are only available at their hospital, such as Electroretinogram (ERG), which is valued at Rs.10 million. 
“With this machine, we ask the patient to look at a light and it traces the electric activity within the eye. It is available only here; earlier people had to go to India and Singapore,” he told Mirror Business. 
Dr. Amaratunga, who has 120,000 surgeries to his name, said that the hospital works on few key objectives such as to enhance the vision of the people, to give hope to people who have completely lost vision through rehabilitation and counselling, etc.
He said that though the hospital is not officially launched yet, around 150 people visit the hospital for a day. 
During the media tour in the hospital, it was experienced that it was designed similar to a resort, creating a peaceful and relaxing environment for the patients, giving a different experience for them. 
Radiant Hospital Director Nadee Gunawardena told Mirror Business that to maintain quality service, they considered the infection control as a priority from the time of designing and construction of the hospital.
“The operating theatre is the heart of a surgical hospital. The theatre complex was built keeping this in mind. Our operating theatre is done as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards with copper laminar flow, with adequate air pressure, antibacterial, seamless walls, epoxy flooring and with a fully-equipped CSSD,” she said.
“We have the latest technology for all eye-related investigations and some of them are exclusively available here - the latest IOLMaster, electro physiological studies (ERG facility),” she said.
Aiming to protect the patients by minimising ‘hospital acquired infections’ and being a surgical hospital, she said that consideration was given to reduce post-surgical infections.
She added that their infection control team is led by a consultant microbiologist and they are adhering to infection control practices. The staff is given regular training programmes.
Further emphasising on how they are reducing the waiting time, she said that waiting time is managed by preparing the patients before they go to the consultant.
“We update their personal information, test the vision, get the refraction done and dilate them enabling the consultant to do the decision-making and patient management part,” she said.
Sharing statistics, she said from February 15 to May 15, they had done 3,807 surgeries, 20,733 channelling, 6,440 investigations and 2,173 lasers. 
The Board of Investment (BoI)-approved hospital, located in Je Ela, had a soft launch on January 26, 2015 and it was noted that the investment value of the project was Rs.450-500 million.