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The hospital network Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL) is expected to infuse an additional investment of around Rs 87 crore for its upcoming Navi Mumbai facility which includes investment to add cancer care facility to the project under development. The setting up of cancer facility in the facility is as part of the company's strategy of covering oncology services through hospitals across the country.
While earlier the company was planning to set up a super speciality hospital with capacity of 350 beds with an investment of around Rs 350 crore, the estimated project cost has been increased to Rs 437.4 crore, by the end of third quarter of the current fiscal year. The number of beds would remain at 350, for the project.
A part of this additional investment would be towards adding cancer care facility in the Navi Mumbai facility, said company officials recently. A senior company official also said that while the company already runs cancer speciality centres, there is a renewed focus on the sector and the healthcare service major would be looking at spreading its cancer care presence across the country, said a senior official of AHEL.
As part of this, it is planning to add cancer speciality centres apart from adding facility to the existing hospitals. It has eight cancer care hospitals and plans are to double it in next three years, while the actual goal is to achieve 20 cancer care hospitals, said Prathap C Reddy founder, chairman of Apollo Hospitals Group, earlier. The hospital network is also setting up cancer centres in the existing hospitals.
It may be noted that the hospital has recently organised Apollo Cancer Conclave 2014, an international forum organised to work every type of cancer curable. While announcing the conference, Preetha Reddy, managing director of AHEL said that the healthcare firm is expecting the cancer care industry to develop on a hub and spoke model.
The size of the centres depend on the facilities they offer and a hub and spoke model where the centres with lesser facilities and cancer care facilities in multi speciality hospitls has to be supported by comprehensive centres as a hub, she said.
However, one of the hindrance in rapid expansion of the speciality care is the adequate availability of trained experts in the segment, said industry sources.
