Healthcare provider Fortis Healthcare Limited is evaluating options to put up greenfield projects internationally, and is mulling using Singapore as its base for overseas expansion and capital, according to its managing director Shivinder Singh.
“We have got offers and we have opportunities to put up greenfield facilities internationally. We are looking at Asia to begin with,” he told mediapersons on the sidelines of a youth summit organised by AIESEC (Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales) that began here on Monday.
“In the domestic market, we already have 10 greenfield projects in the pipeline. About four are going to come up this financial year, and all of them will go on stream in the next two-and-a-half years, taking our total bed strength to 8,000,” he said.
"What next is going international. Fortis' focus is to take the Indian healthcare to the next level in the Asian context and we will find different avenues to make that happen going forward," he said, while refusing to draw any time line.
Stating that the Indian insurance products need to be realigned according to the market, Singh said cashless insurance issue was a little bit hyped.
“Our insurance products are of 1980s and 1990s when the insurance regime was much more regimental. And, therefore, they were protected by the regime at that point. Now with the open-market regime, the products need to be realigned with the market,” he said, adding there was no impact on the business at all due to the issue.
Cashless card transactions are taking place only in a few hospitals and only for the retail consumers of insurance companies. Their insurance portfolios largely constitute corporate insurance tie-ups. Individual retail insurance is a very small segment of that. So, the current issue does not impact the business at all, he said.
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Singh said Fortis had met chairmen of insurance companies to find a holistic solution to the problem. “The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda)'s data is showing the fact that there is a 25-35 per cent increase in charges for cashless reimbursement, which is very disturbing,” Singh said, adding the company had requested the insurance watchdog to display complete data on the scheme.
It may be recalled that Irda chairman J Hari Narayana had earlier said there were serious anomalies in billing or charges being levied by hospitals, and charges for cashless facility were too high when compared with the reimbursement policies.