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Apollo Hospital bags $160 million order
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 18 September 2003, 19:30 IST
CHENNAI: India’s first corporate hospital, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (AHEL), on Thursday said that it has bagged a “prestigious order” from Petronas of Malaysia to build and maintain 310 super speciality hospital in Kuala Lumpur, reports Economic Times, a business daily in India.
Dr Prathap C Reddy, Chairman, Apollo told a news conference in connection with the 20th anniversary here that the Malaysian hospital will become operational in 18 months from now. “We had bid for this along with who’s who of healthcare and we won it,” Dr Reddy added.
He said that the management of Apollo would now strive to become the second largest hospital in the world over the next five years in terms of beds under management. Apollo today owns/manages in excess of 6,200 beds and is the third largest hospital network in the world.
The second largest is Tenet Healthcare of the US with 19,000 beds under its fold. “It is an achievable target, we might well surpass it,” he quipped.
Also, Apollo has received an in-principle nod from the Abu Dhabi government to “upgrade” the medical facilities there. “For them, money is not an issue. They want us to improve and upgrade the medical facilities across the hospitals there. We will form a joint venture which will work towards achieving this,” he said.
On the immediate plans, is to increase the beds under management from 6,200 to 8,000 by 2005. AHEL is also planning to open 250 clinics across the country over the next 24 months. The internal plan is to have at least 35 clinics operational in major cities by the end of this fiscal.
The board of directors of Apollo has cleared a proposal for NRIs in the middle tier of the society. The scheme involves the NRI to remit a fee of $375 to $400 a year and Apollo will take care of all hospitalisation expenses of the NRI and will also take care of flying him/her in and out of the country. This is not being underwritten by any insurance company and Apollo is bearing the entire risk on the venture. “We will now approach the ministry and get clearance before we start offering it,” Dr Reddy said. (Source: ET)