Apollo Hospitals outlines aggressive plans for growth

To double bed capacity by 2004; opening new hospitals in Kolkata, Pune and Raichur

Apollo Hospitals Group, Asias most trusted healthcare provider, organized its 21st Annual General meeting (AGM) today to brief the shareholders about the Groups new initiatives, plans and focus areas for growth in the coming year. Apollo Hospitals outlined plans to double bed capacity from 5,000 presently to 10,000 beds by 2004 and announced the opening of Apollo Hospitals in Kolkata, Pune and Raichur. The Group celebrated its 19th Anniversary yesterday and announced several initiatives to improve the quality of service being offered. These include:

Growth Initiatives

Managed Hospitals: As an effective model to make available quality healthcare facilities to a larger section of the society, Apollo Hospitals will focus on managed hospitals to expand the healthcare services network. Presently the Group has 60% of its bed capacity in owned hospitals and 40% in managed ones. The Group has outlined plans to change this to bring 80% of the bed capacity under the managed hospital network and 20% in owned hospitals. As a part of this, the hospital announced the opening of two more managed hospitals in Raichur and Pune next month.
Other initiatives: The Group is also targeting the vast Business Process Outsourcing market and has put in place infrastructure to provide healthcare outsourcing services to international hospital chains. It has recently entered into agreement with two large hospital services groups, one from the US and the other from UK, to meet their requirements for trained hospital management personnel and para-medical staff. The services being offered also include claims processing for Insurance companies abroad and will create employment opportunities and valuable forex earning capabilities.
Technology Initiatives

Virtual Patient Visit: A first-of-its-kind step, Virtual Patient Visit is aimed at facilitating patient interaction with the family without the need of physical presence. The hospital is offering the service to all its patients at no extra cost. Through this, the patients relatives can get daily updates on his / her health, can see pictures of the patient and can even send greetings, flowers etc. Each patient is assigned a UHID (Universal Hospital Identification Number) which the relatives can enter into the VPV section on Apollos site www.apollolife.com and can access all the information from anywhere in the world.
Apollo Smart Life Card: A comprehensive health report source, it is an 8 MB chip enabled card which will have all details about a patients health records and other information like allergies, blood group number etc which can be of use anytime he/she has to get medical treatment. The card eliminates the need to carry bulky documents and health records and will be make available all the information to Apollos patients.
Telemedicine: After introducing the facility in the country, Apollo Hospitals Group is expanding the facility to offer quality healthcare services to the masses. The Group already operates 16 telemedicine centers in India and provides the facility to seven Military hospitals in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.
It recently signed a MoU with Anna University, Chennai whereby Apollo Hospitals will establish Telemedicine centres at 240 engineering colleges affiliated to the University. The set up will provide medical consultation to the staff and the students of these institutes and to the neighbouring villages. The Group also plans to establish Telemedicine centres in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Ghana, Abu Dhabi and Oman in the near future.

Infrastructural Additions

As part of its endeavour to constantly improve the services it offers, Apollo Hospitals recently inaugurated a state-of-the-art Liver Unit at Apollo Hospitals, Chennai. A stand-alone unit, it has the latest generation equipments along with a dedicated ICU. The Hospital will also make available Liver Dialysis facility at the unit shortly, making it the first such center in the country to offer this service. Apollo Hospitals also installed Linear Accelerator at its Oncology center at Chennai. An advanced Radiation Oncology equipment, it ensures that only the diseased tissue in the body is affected during the treatment through radiation and the surrounding tissue is spared.

The Group also announced the plan to set up a Genetic Research facility at Hyderabad. The center will be developed as a seat of complex medical research and will facilitate improvement in treatment procedures, after understanding the genetic complexities.

The Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd. (AHEL) was formed with the merger of IHCL (Indian Hospitals Corporation Ltd.), DHCL (Deccan Hospitals Corporation Ltd.) and OSHL (Om Sindoor Hotels Ltd.). The enterprise today comprises of a network of 39 hospitals, owning and managing 5,046 hospital beds, 10 primary clinics and over 100 pharmacies, making it the single largest healthcare provider in Asia. The group has an aggregated turnover of over Rs. 500 crores. Apart from the core area of hospitals, the group has also diversified into various related avenues including e-health, franchising, IT & internet based technology, telemedicine, virtual medical university, education and training, home healthcare, pharmacy retailing, hospital project management and health insurance business.

For further information, please contact: Kapil Dhawan, Imprimis Life PR
Ph: 431 7046, 432 1028, 432 1034, 98104 23882