Global Hospitals to set up 350-bed facility in Ahd

As the city gears up to become a major medical tourism hub in the coming years, a 1700-bed national hospital chain is all set to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to set up a 350 bed hospital in Ahmedabad in the upcoming Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors' Summit (VGGIS) next week. Hyderabad based Global Hospitals will invest Rs 250 crore in the first phase to set up a 350 bed hospital here.

"We are in talks with the government and also some private players for land to set up our project. We need around 10 acres of land for the hospital", informed K Ravindranath, chairman and managing director of Global Hospitals confirming that the group will sign an MoU during the Vibrant Gujarat Summit. Ravindranath added that Global Hospitals planned to take the bed-count up to 500 by 2013 with an additional investment of Rs 100 crore.

It currently has 1700 beds across its facilities at Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai, and its 500 bed Mumbai facility will be operational by April this year. "By 2012, with our 500 bed Kolkata facility coming up and expansion at our existing facilities, we target to become a 4000 bed hospital chain in the country", Ravindranath said.

Meanwhile, Global Hospitals has started a telemedicine center in Ahmedabad that will cater to the needs of the patients from Gujarat and its neighbouring states such at Rajasthan & Madhya Pradesh. This centre will allow patients to get guidance from super specialists via video-conferencing and super specialist clinics, which will be held on location on a regular basis.

“We have an increasing number of patients from Gujarat and the neighboring states, mainly liver cases. So, we decided to come up with an information and telemedicine center here. Global Hospitals specialises in organ transplants, especially liver transplants and we have completed over 40 such cases on patients from Gujarat so far. This centre will help patients to reach out to our specialists without taking trouble of traveling to any of our locations for consultation and post-surgical routine follow-up consultations.", Ravindranath informed.

The Group is currently adding around two to three such telemedicine centers each other, and plans to pick up more speed.

"We are targeting to have at least 30-40 telemedicine centers across the country in the next five years, especially in poorly connected areas, like the North Eastern states.", he added.

Currently, Global Hospitals is running telemedicine centers at Kolkata, Bhuvaneshwar, and Guwahati.