Narayana Hrudayalaya, a Bangalore-based multi-speciality hospital chain, is targeting creation of 30,000 beds across the country in the next seven years, according to its chairman D Devi Shetty.
“Traditionally in India, hospitals are built with 100 or 200 beds. Going forward, when the 1.2 billion population have an insurance policy in their hands, these small hospitals are not going to help solve their health problems. The country, which produces 28 million babies a year, needs what is called a health city, which will have 2,000-5,000 beds on one campus with sophisticated and advanced technology and skilled doctors,” he said here on Tuesday.
Narayana Hrudayalaya, which currently has a 3,000-bed health city in Bangalore, a 750-bed hospital in Kolkata, 1,400 beds in Jaipur and one 300-odd-bed in Jamshedpur, is planning to launch a 5,000-bed facility in Ahmedabad shortly.
“We developed a concept called Yeshasvini, a micro health insurance with the Karnataka government eight years ago, which provides coverage for all major operations with a premium of only Rs 5. Today, this scheme is covering 5 million farmers of Karnataka. Our goal is to eventually build health cities of this magnitude in every state capital in India. Right now, we are present in seven cities. We want to double this number in the next three years,” Shetty said.
On Tuesday, it launched the Phase-I of its 5,000-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya-Malla Reddy Hospital comprising 500 beds here. Shetty said the chain would be adding 500 beds to the hospital every year. “Generally, a project of this magnitude requires about Rs 100 crore, provided the building is ready.”
Stating that given an opportunity, India can make medicines for the whole world, Shetty said Narayana Hrudayalaya was currently working on developing a vaccine to prevent heart attacks right from the embryo stage, which was expected to take about eight years to be commercially launched.