Gleneagles Global Hospitals will invest ₹200 crore as part of its expansion and plans to emerge as a dominant player in clinical healthcare in the country.
The investment is part of the strategy it has chalked out to become double its present size in the next five-seven years. It will focus on quality medicare, strengthen patient care and do frontier research, according to its Chairman K Ravindranath.
Gleneagles Global Hospitals, a part of Parkway Pantai, a fully-owned subsidiary of Malaysia-based IHH Healthcare Berhad, now has 1,400 operational beds in its nine hospitals with the major one’s being in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai.
The Global Hospitals was started in 1999 as a 50-bedded venture by Ravindranath. “We are investing to take the bed strength to 2,100 beds across our hospitals in the next two years, besides expanding to Delhi,’’ he told
The Hospital Group is set to cross the ₹1,000-crore turnover mark in fiscal 2016-17. In 2015, IHH Healthcare 73.4 per cent stake in Hyderabad-based Ravindranath GE Medical Associates Private Ltd’s Global Hospitals for ₹1,284 crore. The objective was to consolidate all the Global Hospital’s under the IHH’s Gleneagles brand.
“The partnership with Gleneagles will help to offer global services as they are the second-largest healthcare group in the world,’’ Ravindranath said. The partnership will facilitate synergy between the two. “We have strengths transplant surgeries, especially liver, kidney, lung, while Gleneagles has expertise in bone marrow transplant, cancer care, besides patient care, IT process and systems,’’ he added.
For growth and expansion, Gleneagles Global is looking at acquisition in Delhi. Similarly, it is investing ₹25 crore in its 150- bedded Hyderabad Hospital, which was its first big venture to renovate and improve facilities. “In each city we want to become a dominant player with 1,000 beds and the best clinical care, especially in the tertiary, quartenary care, superspeciality and multi organ transplant,” he said.
On the future focus of the group, Ravindranath said thrust will be on creating centres of excellence. Gleneagles Global will be setting up a Centre of Excellence in Lung transplantion association with University of Texas, Dallas. Other clinical programmes of priority for the hospital are liver & paediatric liver, Pancreas besides heart and lung transplantation, Ravindranath said.
On healthcare industry scenario, he said the regulatory control and competition will lead to consolidation. When asked on recent new norms such as heart stent price regulation by National Pharma Pricing Authority (NPPA), Ravindranath said: “Any new regulation is good for long term and transparent players in the industry.’’ While heatlhcare business is poised for growth in the country, the challenges include human resources and training, he added.