Goa has long depended on a single institution to train its medical specialists. In 2025, the National Medical Commission approved 19 additional MD and MS seats at the government-run Goa Medical College, a measure of how urgently the state needs more doctors trained at home.
At the same time, under the visionary leadership of Health Minister Shri Vishwajit P. Rane, Goa has established a public healthcare system that stands as a national benchmark for accessibility and excellence. Operating on the belief that every citizen deserves state-of-the-art medical care entirely free of cost, the “Goa Model of Healthcare” has aggressively expanded super-speciality infrastructure and proactive, preventive policies, ensuring that top-tier medical intervention is a fundamental right rather than a privilege of the wealthy. In an era where medical costs globally drive families into financial ruin, Goa’s public sector provides a formidable, compassionate safety net.
Yet it is precisely because of this extraordinary, free public ecosystem—combined with a small demographic catchment—that profit-driven multinational corporate hospital chains retreated from Goa, unable to compete using conventional corporate economics. Turning a private hospital into a self-sustaining tertiary teaching and transplant institution in this landscape, while keeping it ethical, financially sound, and open to every patient, is one of the hardest tasks in healthcare leadership.
Ashwin Furtado, Chief Executive Officer of Healthway Hospitals, Goa, has done exactly that. Joining about ten years ago as its first Unit Head on its first day of operations, he has helped steer a doctor-founded facility into Goa’s first and only private teaching, transplant, and research institution, kept every service running through the pandemic, and built an organisation that runs on systems rather than on any one person. Together, a resolute public healthcare apparatus and a pioneering private enterprise have transformed Goa into a beacon of medical excellence.
A Front-Row Seat to Change
Ashwin Furtado grew up in Chinchinim, a quiet village near the River Sal in South Goa. Born in 1983, he belongs to a generation that lived through some of the most rapid technological transformations in history—moving from a black-and-white television with an antenna strapped to a clay-tiled roof to cable and DTH, and from booking trunk calls at the post office to landlines, dial-up internet, broadband, optic fibre, and Starlink. “Having a front-row seat to that kind of exponential change gives you a distinct lens to look far into the future,” he says.
He witnessed a parallel growth story at Manovikas English Medium School in Margao, being part of one of the last batches to see the school evolve from a modest campus in Comba, through a temporary home in a Fatorda canning factory, to the sprawling campus it occupies in Gogol today. As a boy, he always wanted to be an electrician—a hands-on interest he still pursues today.
Choosing Healthcare by Design
His pivot into healthcare was shaped by the economic upheaval of the 2008 financial crisis. Questioning the underlying structure of the economy, he recalled a statement from his economics professor, Dr. Sangeeta Kanan, who observed that the sectors most likely to endure are those that cater to bare necessities. “Through that analytical lens, healthcare stood out to me as the fastest-growing and most resilient sector,” he says.
He went on to complete a PGDM at the Marian Institute of Health Sector Management in Panjim, where his very first credit—a comprehensive overview of the healthcare industry—opened his eyes to the opportunity to make a lasting impact. What began as a calculated decision quickly became his passion.
Learning From the Builders and Disrupting Diagnostics
An internship at Wockhardt Hospitals, then among India’s top-performing healthcare chains, inspired him through the legacy of its founder, Dr. Habil Khorakiwala, and earned him a pre-placement offer. When Fortis Healthcare acquired Wockhardt’s hospitals, his manager brought him across to Fortis, where he built deep experience in hospital marketing and branding. He then joined Suburban Diagnostics, a Mumbai diagnostics start-up, where its founder, Dr. Sanjay Arora, interviewed him directly and placed him in a role of significant responsibility.
When personal reasons brought him back to Goa, he joined Apollo Victor Hospitals and drove brand growth and market expansion under Mr. Victor Albuquerque, whom he regards as the founding father of private, high-quality healthcare in Goa. He credits the Albuquerque family for giving him stability during his initial years back and reinforcing his conviction that Goa needed dedicated healthcare management professionals.
His connection with Suburban Diagnostics, however, was far from over. After Sequoia Capital invested heavily in the brand, Dr. Arora invited Ashwin to invest in and spearhead a new venture: setting up Goa’s first tertiary private testing laboratory. Until then, samples for complex tests were flown to Mumbai, Delhi, or Bengaluru, with standard turnaround times of three days.
Ashwin’s team set up the greenfield laboratory in a record two months, processing complex hormone and tumour marker assays within minutes and delivering reports within about an hour. “We completely disrupted the local market,” he says.
The laboratory paved the way for other diagnostic chains to enter the state, and turned out to be a landmark investment when Dr. Lal PathLabs acquired Suburban Diagnostics in 2021 at an enterprise valuation of up to ₹1,150 crore (over ₹1,200 crore).
Healthway From Day One: A Vision Twelve Years in the Making
Healthway Hospitals was not simply the beginning of another medical facility; it was the realisation of a vision conceived more than twelve years earlier out of a pressing local need. At the time, Goa lacked comprehensive super-speciality care under one roof. Super-specialists had to travel between multiple hospitals and nursing homes to manage their patients, while families were forced to travel outside the state for specialised consultations and procedures—enduring immense financial, emotional, and logistical hardships alongside fragmented care.
That reality brought together more than 20 like-minded consultants practising across North Goa who shared a common belief: Goa needed an ethical, professional, and affordable super-speciality hospital under one roof. Above all stood a single founding principle that became the soul of Healthway: no patient should ever have to go back untreated because of a lack of financial means.
Ashwin Furtado joined as the hospital’s first Unit Head just as the greenfield facility in Ella, Old Goa, moved from its project stage into active operations. Beginning with limited resources and formidable challenges, he spent the following years working at ground zero across departments, building deep relationships with internal and external stakeholders and internalising the Board’s vision of evolving into a teaching hospital. “I essentially grew up in this institution alongside a phenomenal core team,” he says.
As Healthway marks ten years of operations, Ashwin points out that its success belongs to the people who built it—most notably a core group of 33 foundational individuals, now grown to 68, alongside a stalwart team of more than 60 specialists and super-specialists who stood by the institution through every uncertainty and demanding moment.
The COVID-19 Test
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was the defining test of his tenure. When the national lockdown was announced, the Board of Directors set an uncompromising mandate: “We must not turn away a single person in need of healthcare”.
The team regrouped the very next day. Healthway secured special government clearances, arranged accommodation and care for its staff, and became perhaps the only private hospital in the region to keep every single clinical service fully functional throughout the pandemic. Almost all consultants showed up for their regular OPDs and attended every emergency call, while the hospital mobilised in record time to build a fully equipped special ward for some of Goa’s most critical COVID-19 patients.
Thanks to rigorous protocols and the close involvement of Healthway’s doctors in daily operations, not a single staff member contracted the virus on hospital premises while on duty. “That era was a profound period of personality building and strengthening for the entire Healthway family,” he recalls.
Leading by Alignment and Clinical Scale
Today, Healthway operates four units across North and South Goa, including a recently acquired spoke hospital and a dedicated spoke emergency response clinic. It also functions as a premier kidney transplant centre, performing both living and deceased donor transplants with an outstanding success rate.
As CEO, Ashwin views his day-to-day responsibility as one of alignment—ensuring every stakeholder moves toward the Board’s overarching vision. While daily operations are handled by the management team in consultation with him, his years as Unit Head give him an intrinsic grasp of ground-level processes. That background allows him to step in directly—and micromanage critical priorities when the situation demands it—from launching new internal clinical departments to ensuring metrics consistently reflect a positive EBITDA. The result is an automated, system-driven institution that never compromises on ethics or quality.
Pioneers in Medical Education, Research, and Global Integration
Healthway operates on an uncompromising philosophy: hospitals cannot function in a vacuum; clinical care must be inextricably linked with academics. Despite being established as an academic institution only in 2022, Healthway has achieved in a remarkably short span a level of academic and research standing that older, larger institutions take decades to build. Formally registered under the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) as an Institute of Higher Education in India, Healthway has proven that a private hospital can operate with the soul of a public servant:
- DNB Accreditation: Recognised by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), Healthway is the only hospital in Goa to receive simultaneous DNB accreditation in General Medicine, Paediatrics, and Anaesthesiology, offering two seats per department annually to candidates selected through the rigorous nationwide NEET PG screening. Its inaugural General Medicine batch has already cleared final theory and practical examinations to earn the National Board Postgraduate degree, and the hospital is actively pursuing DNB recognition in Radiology and Cardiology.
- Neonatology Excellence: Healthway holds dual accreditation from the National Neonatology Forum (NNF)—both Infrastructure Accreditation and Academic Accreditation at the Level 3A NICU standard. It is the only centre in Goa to hold NNF Academic Accreditation, training two post-MD/DNB/DCH doctors and four post-BSc and GNM nurses each year.
- Global and National Life-Support Training: Recognised by the American College of Surgeons, USA, as an Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) training centre, Healthway also regularly conducts Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS), Basic Life Support (BLS), and Neonatal Resuscitation Programme (NRP) courses.
- Academic Infrastructure: Supporting its trainees is a medical library housing over 2,000 books alongside e-books and print and electronic journals, with the hospital actively pursuing inclusion in the second rollout of the Government of India’s One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme.
- Research and Clinical Trials: Faculty and residents have published more than 31 papers in indexed national and international journals, with 45 research studies currently underway across General Medicine, Paediatrics, Anaesthesia, ENT, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Critical Care, Pulmonology, and Regenerative Medicine. Backed by an Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) holding dual registration with the Department of Health Research (DHR) and the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), Healthway is in advanced stages of initiating sponsored drug trials in Gynaecology and Gastroenterology, as well as paediatric vaccine trials.
- National Conferences and Accolades: Healthway conducted the state paediatrics conference (IAP Goa State Pedicon) in 2024, co-hosted GOACON 2024, and independently hosted GOACON 2025, where a Healthway DNB General Medicine resident won the E-Poster Presentation award. At APICON 2026, Healthway’s General Medicine DNB residents placed fifth in the country, competing against 48 teams from India’s premier medical colleges.
- Global Outreach: The success of this integrated clinical-academic model has drawn international recognition. Healthway is now regularly invited to mentor healthcare institutions globally and train doctors abroad, including dedicated outreach to help build academically backed clinical systems in small African nations.
The Road Ahead
Ashwin’s ambition is for Healthway Hospitals to become one of India’s top five private teaching institutions in the near future. Given the opportunity, he is also keen to work with and support the Government of Goa’s Health Department in any way possible.
For Ashwin personally, knowing that Healthway is now a self-sustaining, system-driven entity in capable hands allows him to look toward his next horizon. Viewing his tenure at Healthway as his final stint in healthcare management, he is actively studying ways to diversify his operational focus into agriculture, a sector where he sees immense opportunity.
The Workshop, the Grill and Home
Away from the boardroom, working with his hands provides a vital counterbalance. In his home workshop, he takes on electrical wiring, carpentry, wood carving with power tools, and household appliance repairs, while tending to his collection of motorcycles and wrenching on his Jeep. He is equally passionate about outdoor cooking—maintaining a full backyard barbecue and smoking setup where he experiments with recipes on his Weber cast-iron grill and Lodge cast-iron cookware—and sets aside time every morning to read.
He deeply treasures the time he spends with his mentor, stalwart urologist Dr. Madhumohan Prabhudesai, a foundational pillar of Healthway whose counsel has shaped both his personal and professional journey.
Above all, Ashwin credits his family for keeping him anchored. He candidly notes that healthcare management demands everything from a leader, making a conventional work-life balance nearly impossible without the understanding of loved ones. At home, his wife, Roseanne, runs her own full-time diagnostics business while seamlessly managing their household and making up for the everyday moments his schedule demands. “It is her support that provides me the foundation and stability to lead,” he says. And then there is their daughter. “My daughter, Anjali, is the love of my life,” he says, “my most favourite girl in the world.”
He also expresses profound gratitude to his parents, who stood by him through thick and thin—his father for giving him the unconditional go-ahead to take calculated risks in uncertain times while assuring him he would always have a safety net if things went the other way, and his mother for dedicating her life to keeping him grounded in morals, ethics, and empathy. He takes immense pride in his younger brothers, Dr. Miguel Vicente Furtado (M.D. Radiodiagnosis) and Dr. Lon Jonathan Furtado (M.S. Orthopaedics), who have excelled in their medical careers and family lives and remain his pillars of support whenever needed.
Work Your Way Up
His message to young entrepreneurs and aspiring healthcare leaders—whether newly graduated clinical consultants or fresh management trainees—is to start from the ground and be willing to get their hands dirty first. “You must work your way up. You cannot effectively lead from the top without truly understanding and experiencing for yourself how the job is executed at every single level,” he says. “Working in healthcare is fundamentally about empathy. Only when you have seen and felt what the people working alongside you go through on a daily basis can you set the right expectations for your team and deliver exceptional, lasting results for your organisation.”
