Max Healthcare: Expanding horizons

Max Healthcare is looking to spread its wings by stepping outside the national capital region. The company, which has eight hospitals in the region, wants to consolidate its presence in north India with two new hospitals in Punjab and one in Dehradun. It will add one more hospital in Delhi, taking the count to 12 by the year end. The four additions will be super-speciality hospitals.

“We are moving to cities like Mohali (in Punjab) and Dehradun that are close to Delhi, so easily reachable by the management and doctors. They will be easy to run from an administrative perspective,” notes Dr Dilpreet Brar, executive director, Max Healthcare.

For the records, the Max Healthcare network of hospitals registered revenue of Rs 685 crore in 2010-11, a growth of 28 per cent over the previous year. The total investment for expansion outside Delhi is around Rs 300 crore, which will be funded through internal accruals and borrowings.

Its hospitals received around 35,000 international patients last year, and the company is bullish on the growth of medical tourism in the country. Will the common man find hospitals like Max affordable? Dr Brar says, “As the volume grows, as our numbers grow, prices will automatically come down because of scale.”

Although price points won’t be lowered in Delhi any time soon, the company’s hospitals in the smaller cities will offer cheaper services. “The services there will be cheaper because the operational and capital costs are considerably less,” points out Brar.

Following a growing trend aimed at targeting the youth that form a major chunk of the population, Max Healthcare is present on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. And to communicate with the masses, it has several outreach programmes. “We have neighbourhood camps in Delhi and smaller cities; we hold free OPDs (outpatient department) and CMEs (continuing medical education programmes) in tier II and III cities. Also, we have tie-ups with several residents’ associations and social clubs etc where we provide free services and educational talks,” informs Brar.

To complete the offering, the company is set to enter medical education soon. The first college will be set up in Greater Noida (Uttar Pradesh) and should be up and running in a few years. Mohali has been chosen as the next destination. Also, it will set up a nursing school in Dehradun by 2012.

The company maintains that it has no plans of expanding very rapidly. Brar says, “In 10 years, we want to have a solid presence in and around Delhi. We are not even thinking about a pan-India presence or expanding abroad right now. Because when we look at where we stand, we don’t look at revenue, we look at the quality and clinical outcome. In that sense we are happy with what we have achieved thus far.”