Apollo setting up third hospital in Bengaluru

India's leading integrated healthcare provider Apollo Hospitals is setting up its third super specialty hospital in the city with 200 beds at an investment of Rs.150 crore, a top official said Monday.

"The super specialty hospital in the city's northwest suburb is a greenfield project, which will increase our capacity to 1,050 beds from 850 at two similar hospitals in Bengaluru and one in Mysuru," Apollo group chairman Prathap C. Reddy told reporters here.

The Chennai-based healthcare group has invested Rs.500 crore in Karnataka so far and plans to expand its presence across the state by setting up specialty hospitals at Ballari, Hubballi and Mangaluru over the next two years.

"The new hospital in Bengaluru, to be commissioned in 2015, will have 50 specialties, a 50-bedded special unit to monitor patients needing critical care and 100 consultants round the clock," Reddy said on the occasion.

The new facility will offer a range of diagnostic services, including a 128-slice CT scan, 1.5T 18 channel MRI and high end 4D ultra-sonography.

"Emergency services will be operational 24x7 to provide healthcare at all times and operational theatres with post-operation facilities will enable our physicians to perform most complex surgeries at ease," Reddy said.

The group is also planning to expand the reach of its Apollo clinics to 20 from 14 across the state and set up one more Apollo cradle in the state over the next 12 months.

The group's first hospital in the city has an oncology centre with an advanced radio surgery system (True Beam), making it one of its kind in Asia. The orthopaedic centre in its second hospital conducted about 1,000 procedures this calendar year.

As Asia's largest healthcare group, Apollo has 8,488 beds across 51 hospitals, 1,586 pharmacies, 92 primary care and diagnostic clinics, 100 telemedicine units in 10 countries.