Dr Ahmad Al Amadi is one of the three founders behind the Advanced Hearing and Balance Centre in Dubai, which specialises in ear, nose and throat disorders. Also the medical director of Al Baraha Hospital, he talks about the challenges of becoming an entrepreneur and why he believes ethical practice is good business:
q Was the transition from doctor to entrepreneur difficult?
a It was. Actually, the biggest shock for me was how long the process takes to get a licence to start practicing.
Even though you're a consultant and medical director of a government hospital?
Yes, they treat everybody the same. You have to get your place approved by the Dubai Health Authority, then the Municipality, then back to the Economic Department. All that took six months to get everything sorted. But it is the right thing to do, because they are thinking of the patients' safety.
Did you get help to fund the startup?
We submitted our project to Mohammed Bin Rashid Establishment for SME Development. I did a presentation for the team there and they were really interested. They transferred the file to Al Tomooh (an initiative which provides Emiratis with startup funding for small and medium-sized businesses), and we got finance from them.
Has it been challenging negotiating with insurance companies?
Yes, patients that we treat deal with many different types of insurance. To provide a service to all of our patients we have to sign so many different contracts with so many different insurance companies, which is ridiculous. Each one has different regulations, different pricing that they accept and different formats for submitting prices and claims, so it is really hectic to deal with these companies. We have managed to sign up with most … but some of the companies we still haven't managed to sign up with yet.
How successful has the centre been so far?
Every month we have an increase in our operations and on the financial side. The usual thing in the market is that most diagnostic centres give commissions to the doctors when they refer. Ethically I don't agree with that and I think it should be banned.
Why do you think the practise should be banned?
This is a conflict of interest and it makes a doctor refer for testing that a patient might not need. We don't give any commission or any percentage to the clinics that send us patients because I don't want that to affect the referral. That has affected our patient flows a lot. In our meetings there has been a lot of argument that we should, but I am sticking to my ethics. Although it's going to be slower than other clinics, eventually doctors will find out that this is the best place for their patients.
