Apollo Hospitals: ’We Are Trying to Build 10 Hospitals Every Year’
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Apollo Hospitals, the country’s largest healthcare chain, wants to add 10 hospitals a year for providing services to the population at the bottom of the pyramid. The aim is to reach out to a billion people in a decade. In an interview with Joe C Mathew, Apollo Hospitals Executive Chairman Prathap C Reddy says the challenge is not in the funding, but in finding the human resources. Excerpts:
Apollo is the first and only hospital in the country to have a stamp bearing its name. Have you achieved what you set out to do?
To provide an Indian the same level of care as a patient could get abroad — that was the vision with which I raised $50,000 (to start Apollo Hospitals in 1983). I wanted that void to be filled and I think I have done it. Today whatever we do is as good or better than the best hospitals in the world. Recently, hospitals like Mayo Clinic accepted that Apollo standards are as good as theirs and at a cost that is one-tenth of theirs.
But as a healthcare provider, do you feel you have given what the country expects from you?
We need to reach the bottom of the pyramid and for that we need to work hard. We can’t do it the same way as we are doing now. What we need to do is to innovate and use technologies to get there. This is why we are doing the ’Touching a billion lives’ programme where we are trying create hospitals through a ’Reach’ model.
