Young Prodigy
You and I might ascribe adolescence to Pepsi-Cola or Scooby-Doo. Nadiah, on the other hand, filled her childhood bedroom with human anatomy drawings. “I had an early fascination for science and biology—that and I found bones easier to draw than people!” she grins. “Another one of my favourite things to do was to flip through the World Book Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Encyclopedia.”
“Healthcare is a wonderfully complex industry,” she sighs. “There are so many moving pieces and variables. The one thing each component has in common, however, is a human-centric approach.” Although Nadiah doesn’t treat patients personally, she is lent wings by the knowledge that her every executive decision holds weight. “At the back of my mind, I’m always acutely aware that our actions have real life-and-death repercussions. There is a high level of satisfaction in seeing someone who was initially ill, walk out the door healed.”
TMC Life Sciences Berhad has elevated healthcare so remarkably that its rivals keep checking the scoreboard. In 2017, the private listed company saw a turnover in the vicinity of RM152 million plus a market capitalisation of RM1.4 billion. Almost 800 staff—750 of them stationed in its flagship Thomson Hospital alone—rely on TMCLS for wages. Each day brings an average of 450 outpatients to the hospital’s doors, while some 20,000 inpatients occupied its beds in 2017.
"Our key objective is to help patients manage the cost of medical care by getting them to be accountable for their own health from the start," expresses Nadiah. With this goal at its crux, Thomson Hospital is patronised by individuals, couples and families who also trust that ‘prevention is better than cure.’
When asked to break down the multivalent role of CEO, she rests her chin on her small hands for some seconds. “At this level, it’s about managing people and prioritising their needs. But things can also get really random, especially since we’ve begun building the new hospital,” she says, waving at a nearby window. Perfectly timed, a power crane whizzes past the fifth floor, leaving decibels in its wake.
If the grand announcement mid-2018 slipped past your attention, remember, you heard it from Malaysia Tatler first! What was Tropicana Medical Centre not long ago, is now Thomson Hospital, a subsidiary of Thomson Medical Centre Group in Singapore. A slew of exciting developments, all scheduled for completion by 2020, include the addition of 400 beds to Thomson Hospital Kota Damansara, the creation of a 500-bed hospital Thomson Iskandar Medical Hub in Johor, and the expansion of six fertility centres nationwideof its fertility centre network across Malaysia.
“Everything and everyone needs to be choreographed, and the standards are exacting. The position entails a combination of things, which is what I really love,” confesses the CEO, whose brilliant mind clearly requires staying busy, to keep boredom at bay.
