Global Hospitals plans over Rs 500 cr expansion

The Hyderabad-based Global Hospitals Group is planning to invest over Rs 500 crore during 2012 to expand its hospital network as well upgrade existing hospitals with super-speciality cancer care centers. The group is in the process of equipping its hospitals with the latest advanced radiation therapy machine, TrueBeam STx imported from Germany, a senior executive of the company said.

“We are launching the upgraded hospital in Bangalore, BGS Global Hospital, with world’s most advanced radiation therapy machine, TrueBeam STx tomorrow. We have invested Rs 40 crore on this machine, which is the first of its kind in Asia Pacific. We will have this machine in all our hospitals in the phased manner,” Dr K Ravindranath, chairman and managing director, Global Hospitals said.

He said apart from BGS Global Hospital in Bangalore, the advanced cancer care centers will be opened in Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai in the next one year.

While its new hospital is ready for inauguration in Mumbai’s Lower Parel next month, the group would commission two more hospitals in Kolkata and Delhi with 450 beds each in the next two years, he added. In the second phase of expansion, the 12-year old Global Hospital group specialising in organ transplantation would set up hospitals in Ahmedabad and Bhubaneshwar as well as some smaller hospital in all the cities, he said. “We have adopted a hub and spoke model for network expansion. In each of the big cities we will have one super specialty tertiary care hospital and several smaller hospitals with 50-200 beds each catering to wide spectrum of patients. Once we complete the expansion in big cities, we will also venture into Tier-II cities,” Dr Ravindranath told Business Standard.

The group, which is presently operating nine hospitals in the country, will have a capacity of 2,100 beds with the commissioning of Mumbai hospital next month. It aims to increase the number of beds to 4,000 plus in the next three years.. The Mumbai hospital will have 450 beds with tertiary care and multi organ transplant centre.

On funding requirements, he said the group would utilise internal accruals and additional equity from the promoters for the time being. The group had raised Rs 138 crore venture capital from Everstone Capital about four years ago.

The Global Cancer Institute at BGS Global Hospitals, Bangalore will mark the group’s foray into offering a comprehensive 360-degree cancer treatment services. The institute is equipped with TrueBeam STx radiation therapy machine.

BGS Global Hospital is the first hospital in the whole of Asia Pacific to install such machine, said David James, director of Surgical Sciences at Varian Medical Systems, Germany, the makers of the machine. All over the world only 145 hospitals are using this machine, he said.