Something went seriously wrong with the marketing efforts of the Peerless Hospital & B K Roy Research Centre, which was set up in Calcutta five years ago. The venture by the Peerless group and Hospitex SA of France is trying to rediscover itself now.

The handicap seems to have been the lack of big names attached to the hospital, when

it was started in 1994. However, the management of the hospital has moved in to change the scenario.

The hospital has tied up with some NRI specialist doctors in the US, Canada and UK for upgradation and technological collaboration. These experts are visiting the hospital regularly and even treating patients in critical cases.The company is also launching a concerted effort at brand building anddeveloping the image of the hospital. ``We are operating at between 65-70 per cent occupancy and would like to achieve 80 per cent, which is considered the maximum in the health business,'' says T K Roy, managing director of the Peerless Hospitex Hospital & Research Center Ltd.

Roy claims that the hospital is the best in Calcutta and one of the best in the country. ``We have equipment and machinery to treat the entire range of speciality diseases under one roof. For complicated cases, we have the expertise of different departments at our service.''

The problem is that for major diseases, Calcuttans still tend to move south-to places like Vellore, Chennai and Bangalore. Practising physicians in the city somehow continue to ignore the Peerless Hospital, advising their patients to move south.

``We have treated so many patients who have been to other places and have returned without getting proper treatment. Imagine moving to a far off place and spending so much money in staying at that place for a month,when you have comparable facilities at home,'' Roy says.

Calcutta also boasts of a handful of private hospitals within the city-each a specialist in its own field of medicine. They enjoy greater visibility in the city mainly due to the presence of the reputed physicians at these places.

``But no one has so many departments and such comprehensive treatment facilities as we do. We have around 120 reputed senior consultants from all over the city working with us on certain days. Moreover, there are more than 40 physicians employed with us,'' Roy says.

The hospital is now focussing on some of the speciality areas of medicine. B K Chakladar, chief executive officer and medical superintendent of the hospital, says, ``We are doing total knee and hip replacements with imported components from Switzerland. These are basically ageing diseases and the treatment will help patients to walk again.''

He adds, ``Recently, we did a complicated operation to join the severed arm of a lady who had been attacked with achopper. It involved joining the tendon, the blood vessels and the nerves-an operation that involved several departments.''

Chakladar cites another case where a patient from Bangladesh came over to the hospital with a bullet embedded in his chest. ``Doctors in Bangladesh were not able to take the bullet out, but we did it successfully,'' he says.In fact, the hospital gets 15 per cent of its patients from Bangladesh. It seems to have a greater reputation in Bangladesh that it enjoys in Calcutta. Patients regularly come here from Nepal, too. Another area where the hospital is deve-loping expertise is ``precious pregnancy''. These are cases where the couple has an infertility problem and pregnancy is achieved through special means.

Chakladar says, ``Though we are trying to focus on speciality diseases to increase our revenues, we are in no way going up market. We are committed to provide world-class healthcare at affordable costs.''

One would hope that it finally works out that way for Peerless Hospital.