Dr. Minnie Bodhanwala: A Strategic and Visionary Leader in Healthcare

The Healthcare industry is undergoing a paradigm shift owing to the recent pandemic and the rise of digital technology. The pandemic served as a reminder that the industry and participating organizations need to be more resilient, agile, and innovative. They need to be digitally enabled and innovative to enhance their reach and address the health challenges of the coming years. 

As the CEO at Wadia Hospitals, Dr. Minnie Bodhanwala considers innovation as a continuous process that assists them in their long-term vision to make Healthcare available, accessible, and affordable to all without compromising on the quality of care. It also serves their short-term goals which are more focused on increasing the scope of services for their patients, so everything is available under one roof. 

Though she strongly believes that innovation is key to overcoming most of the challenges in healthcare, she also believes that excessive innovation can lead to many struggles as well. “The idea is to manage innovation in a balanced amount and learn from best practices and experiences of healthcare providers across the industry. Thus, we could say that innovation is an organizational approach and not an individual approach as many forces would drive the need for innovation in an organization,” says Dr. Minnie.

A Creditable Leader

With over 35 years of demonstrated experience in Change Management, Crisis Management, and Growth of organizations in the fields of Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, Law, Real Estate, Public Health, and Non-Profit & Trust Organizations across India, Dr. Minnie is an inspiration for many and a strong advocate of women empowerment.

She serves as the CEO of Wadia Hospitals in Mumbai, which comprises century-old renowned hospitals in the field of Women & Child Health; Nowrosjee Wadia Maternity Hospital (400 beds) & Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children (525 beds). She is also a Board of Director at Bombay Dyeing Mfg. & Co. Ltd, National Peroxide Ltd, and the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, Ltd. and also the advisor to the Chairman of Wadia Group for CSR activities, advisor to Impact India Foundation, and advisor to the Modern Education Society in Mumbai and Pune, Advisor for Britannia Nutrition Foundation & Sir Ness Wadia Foundation. As a director, she has chaired and been part of several key committees- Audit Committee, Health & Safety Committee, Stakeholders Committee, CSR Committee, Risk Management Committee, Crisis Management Committee, Strategic Committee, etc.

Dr. Minnie is also a Principal Assessor with National Accreditation Board for Hospital & Healthcare Providers (NABH), an Internal Auditor for Joint Commission International (JCI), and an internationally recognized auditor for ISO 9001:2015. She is Lead Clinical Surveyor for American Accreditation Commission International (AACI). She also holds a certification of ISQua Expert from 2020.

As a director, overlooking Bombay Dyeing; Dr. Minnie has expertly streamlined operations and cash flows for the Real Estate & Retail Segment of Bombay Dyeing during a crisis and helped turn around the company which is one of the oldest companies in India established in the year 1879 and has a market cap of INR 2,200 crores.

As a Trustee of the Modern Education Society, which operates 7 renowned colleges in Mumbai and Pune, Dr. Minnie solely was responsible for establishing governance and revitalizing the colleges from a crisis mode with her strategic vision and planning.  

Heralding Change

As the CEO, Dr. Minnie’s role is focused on strategizing and achieving the objectives and striving harder toward the vision and mission of the organization. She also dedicates a lot of time to positive change management and team building across all the departments. She is an individual who is striving for impact and is focused on results while always believing in a realistic approach for the everyday challenges she faces which helps her achieve the most difficult tasks with precision.

She says, “As a leader, I have always focused on engaging with all employees of the workforce and developing a culture of motivation for them, we are constantly innovating and coming up with new services to help our patients receive affordable care. I am a visionary leader with both a democratic and a transformational approach, depending on what the situation demands.”

Minnie has played an instrumental role in bringing a positive transformation at Wadia Hospitals and has shown compassion towards the underprivileged Women and Children of our Nation. With her dedication, excellence, innovation, and sustainable vision Wadia Hospitals being a charitable semi-government organization are providing quality, safe and affordable healthcare to the underprivileged Women and Children of our community. She has contributed in a strong way to the development of Public Health Pan-India by leading projects through various foundations. She is also working closely with UNICEF Maharashtra and established the State Centre of Excellence to tackle Malnutrition at the Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Minnie took over as the CEO of Wadia Hospital in 2012 and introduced many positive changes under her leadership. During this journey, she has traveled from strength to strength, adding several feathers to the cap- for the hospitals some of her key achievements are: –

  • Centers of excellence for Paediatric Cardiology, Paediatric Neurology, Paediatric Neurosurgery, Paediatric Surgery, Nephrology, Hemat-Oncology, Bone Marrow Transplant, Human Milk Bank, IVF, and many more.
  • One of the largest NICUs in the world with 155 beds.
  • Our Children’s Hospital is a nodal center for Club Foot treatment in Maharashtra, India, and also the only center in Western India that provides zero-day dialysis for newborns. In partnership with UNICEF, BJWHC is the State Centre of Excellence for Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre for children with Severe Acute Malnutrition.
  • BJWHC is First Hospital in India to have achieved accreditation from the American Accreditation Commission International (AACI). The hospitals have received NABH Accreditation, Nursing Excellence Certificate from NABH, NABL, and Accreditation for institutional ethics committee from NABH.
  • Strategic planning and innovation have helped in several key areas like process improvement, methods of service delivery, ways of communication, customer relations, healthcare products, organizational framework, etc. 

She also played a major role in the relief and rehabilitation programs during the Covid-19 pandemic situation, this included setting up a 100-bedded COVID-19 ward at the Children’s and Maternity hospital with all the supporting critical care equipment and providing hot meals and grocery hampers to the families in need, around 2 crore food hampers and 35 million food servings were arranged in a short span of 8 weeks.

Being a Woman Leader

Dr. Minnie has always believed in building systems and implementing them to achieve the desired results. Understanding problems and being creative in solving them is something that has impacted the way she works and helped her achieve success in whatever she does. “I could only attribute my success to the team I work with and of course my family without the support of the prior and understanding of the latter I won’t be as successful as I am today,” she says.

Even if she has proved herself over and over again, she keeps facing gender discrimination and related challenges even today. It is just that she has become better at accepting those challenges. “The male-dominated industry as we call it, is not able to see the strengths of an individual. It is not about whether someone is a male or a female. One should leave that aside and consider the core qualities and strengths of a person without pointing out gender. There is a need for change in people’s perceptions, attitudes, and mentality. I think to evaluate someone purely based on his or her gender is wrong. Even when I joined this present hospital, people were apprehensive about whether a woman would be able to handle the responsibilities of the hospital. At every step in my journey, I could sense the doubt in people’s minds, but I managed to prove them wrong. I think there is indeed a lot more potential for women to come forward in entrepreneurship given the opportunity,” she says.

Bringing Women to the Top

Dr. Minnie believes that more women executives at the top will help businesses by creating gender diversity and benefit employees at all levels of the organization by creating an environment that is beneficial to all. It further gives a sense of confidence to all employees that the organization promotes an inclusive approach and further motivates all employees in achieving individual success for the organization. A progressive approach to corporate governance further helps organizations attract and retain talent and help reduce attrition.

Dr. Minnie is a strong supporter and promoter of women’s empowerment and draws inspiration from one such great leader after which Wadia Group’s Children’s Hospital is named, she is Bai Jerbai Wadia. What inspires Dr. Minnie the most about her is her simplicity and great vision for society especially the women and children at a time when they were ignored the most in the early 19th Century. “It is simply because of the timely vision of women like her that we are here today. I draw great inspiration from her and strive hard for long sustained meaningful and impactful work,” she says.

She adds, “One must focus on adding sustainable value to the healthcare delivery system. More than exceptional growth, women should look forward to sharing more stories of operational success and its impact on the community at large. One should closely work with market-led functions to ensure sharing of best practices, expeditious resource deployment, and reporting consistency. I am very positive and hopeful that together we can envisage a great future for the healthcare services in our country as we re-imagine and transform healthcare together.”

Maintaining her Work-Life Balance

Dr. Minnie looks at health in a very holistic manner. For her, both physical and mental health is very important! She makes it a point to have at least 30 minutes of walking every day, supported by a well-balanced diet each day. She also likes doing yoga, cooking, and traveling frequently for work or leisure for a change of environment and to keep herself happy. “Spending quality time with family also gives me the boost and motivation to stay healthy! My advice to others is to take time out for yourself and plan activities and changes in lifestyle to live a healthy life! It is important to lead a healthy lifestyle as we are seeing in the current situation wherein people with chronic conditions related to lifestyle are at much higher risk as compared to the others,” she advises.

Greeting the Future

Continuing with the current executive journey in Healthcare, Dr. Minnie is looking forward to more leadership roles in Entrepreneurship. She is also looking forward to being a mentor and helping inspire and empower many women. 

For the organization, DR. Minnie and her team are looking forward to continuing their journey of excellence in patient care, research publications, and accreditations. They are also focusing on increasing the scope of their services with an improved focus on organ transplantation and Oncology treatments. “We are also undergoing a complete transformation of our Maternity hospital with added new scope of services that will be started by the end of 2023. We are also increasing our International outreach to promote medical tourism. As a mission we will keep trying to excel in every front and achieve the maximum for our stakeholders and the community at large in the years to come,’ concludes Dr. Minnie.

Key Achievements 

  • Featured in India Forbes March 2019 as a “Globally Recognized Indian Business Leaders” 
  • Rated amongst the top 25 Living legends of Healthcare in the country.
  • Winner of more than 100 national & international awards in Healthcare Industry
  • Certificate for Women on Boards by Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
  • Certification Record of Achievement for COVID-19 by World Health Organization (WHO)

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