Apollo launches day surgery centre in Chennai

Apollo Hospitals today announced the launch of its day surgery centre in Chennai focusing on day surgeries or minor surgeries requiring duration of up to 60 minutes.

Speaking to the reporters after the launch, Apollo Hospitals group founder-executive chairman Prathap C Reddy, said the company was planning to set up five centres in Chennai in the near future and would establish centres in other parts of the country later.

The group is already providing day surgery services through its various hospitals, while the new surgery centres are an extension to provide exclusive surgery services for patients with minor health problems, who could leave the hospital in a maximum time of 10 hours.

"We used to have around 300-500 surgeries a day in all our hospitals and two-thirds of these surgeries could be done in day surgery centres. We expect the centre to be break even in the first six months," Reddy said. Each centre is expected to have a project cost of Rs 5 crore, excluding the cost of leasing the land.

The day surgery centre in Chennai is attached to Apollo Clinics, Apollo Emergency 24X7, Apollo Chest Pain Clinics and Apollo Pharmacy.

The day surgery business is expected to have a revenue of around Rs 20 crore, according to company sources. These centres could carry out almost all the procedures delivered through hospitals.

The company expects to carry out 50 surgery procedures a day and has facilitated 20 beds including recovery beds. However, since the patients are expected to leave on the same day, the bed-wise turnover could not be calculated while it is targeting high turnover through the day surgery centres, said Reddy.