Fortis Healthcare is restructuring across its 53 hospitals in India to bring in more efficiency and re-organise the management structure.
The country’s second-largest chain was promoted by former owners of Ranbaxy, Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh. Two days earlier, it sought shareholder approval to change its name to Fortis Healthcare (India) Ltd, to focus more on the domestic market.
It will realign its hospitals (8,000 beds spread across 13 states) into three different regions. The southern and western regions will come under one operational head, while hospitals in North India will be handled by two independent divisional heads, say sources.
“It is an internal exercise to create three regional divisions with almost the same size. The operating chiefs of these divisions will directly report to me,” Shivinder Mohan Singh, managing director, told Business Standard.
Sources said Lloyd Nazareth, chief operating officer of Fortis Hospitals, would be in charge of both southern and western regions. The hospitals in northern India will have Jasbir Grewal and Ashish Bhatia, currently heading some key hospitals of the chain in the area, as regional heads.
Sources said the changes were triggered by resignation and relocation of some key executives and the fast pace at which the chain was expanding in India and abroad.
Fortis Global Healthcare Holdings Pvt Ltd, a privately-held entity owned by the family of the Singh brothers, handles the global aspirations of the group. Fortis Global already owns the Hong Kong-listed Quality Healthcare Asia Ltd, the largest private healthcare service provider in Hong Kong, with a network of 60 wholly-owned medical centres and 500 affiliated clinics, 40 dental and physiotherapy centres, and a private nursing agency with a database of over 3,000 nurses. A few months ago, Fortis Global had acquired the Dental Corporation chain in Australia and New Zealand.
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In November last year, Fortis-Wockhardt Hospitals’ CEO, Vishal Bali, was appointed the CEO of Fortis Global Healthcare and relocated from Bangalore to Singapore. At the same time, Bhavdeep Singh, CEO of Fortis Healthcare, left the organisation to go back to the US, citing family reasons, after two years of service with the group. Fortis is yet to appoint a replacement for Bhavdeep Singh.
According to the earlier structure, Bhavdeep Singh was heading the entire Fortis Healthcare network, except the group of hospitals acquired from Wockhardt in 2009. These hospitals maintained a separate identity - Fortis Hospitals – and were headed by Bali. Another acquired hospital, Fortis Malar Hospitals in Chennai, remained as another subsidiary of the group.
After the exit of Singh and Bali, two of the hospitals in Mumbai which used to be part of Fortis Healthcare, have been brought under the control of Fortis Hospitals. Malar has been added to this network. Now, all these hospitals had come under Lloyd Nazareth, said sources close to the development.
Industry experts feel the reorganisation will see southern and western entitites getting merged into one legal entity in future.