Hrudayalaya eyes 30,000 beds in 5 yrs

Narayana Hrudayalaya, the Bangalore-based heart care hospital, will have a 30,000-bed strength in its health cities across the country in five years. It has earmarked Rs 1,000 crore for the expansion.

The hospital chain, credited with performing the highest number of cardiac surgeries each day, also plans to set up health cities in Mexico, Malaysia and Indonesia, along with local partners, according to its chairman Devi Prasad Shetty.

He was speaking to the media after announcing the launch of the 500-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya Malla Reddy Hospital here on Saturday. The Malla Reddy Group of Institutes chairman C Malla Reddy said 500 beds would be added every year at the Hyderabad facility to reach a capacity of 5,000 beds.

Artificial heart implants
Shetty said efforts were on to bring down the costs of artificial heart implantation in the country. Narayana Hrudayalaya has successfully implanted an artificial heart, which runs on rechargeable batteries, in ten persons in the country.

The first surgery cost about Rs 50 lakh and the cost for subsequent surgeries came down to Rs 30 lakh. “It will come down further,” Shetty said.

Vaccine against heart attacks
The group, through its research arm Thrombus Research Centre (TRT), is working on a vaccine to prevent heart attacks. It has collected samples from 12,000 families that have seen deaths due to heart attacks before the age of 55 years.

The research is being funded by Tata Trust, Western Foundation and Dixons of UK.

“It will take eight to ten years for some tangible results to come for the vaccine, “ Shetty said.

He said the hospital planned to have health cities in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Jamshedpur, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata. JPMorgan and Biocon chairman Kiran Mazumdar Shaw are equity partners.