India?s largest corporate hospital chains? Apollo Hospitals, Fortis Healthcare and Max Healthcare?are poised for an aggressive foray into medical education, which was opened to them recently.
While the largest chain, Apollo, committed an initial investment of Rs 1,000 crore on Thursday in medical education, the second largest player, Fortis, announced its plans to offer not only pure medicine courses but nursing, dentistry, and other paramedical courses as well. Max Healthcare said it is contemplating entering medical education ?in two to three years from now.?
The Centre has allowed companies to set up medical colleges, as reported by FE on Wednesday. Prathap C Reddy, chairman, Apollo Group, while replying to a FE query said, ?We are working out the modalities for setting up a global health academy, which would include an undergraduate medical college with an initial intake of 200 students. The rollout plans are still in early stages, but it could cost some Rs 1,000 crore?.
He added that Apollo has appointed McKinsey as its consultant for doing the groundwork on this academy.
?A separate team is working on this project, which is expected to come out with a report in the next 90 days,? Reddy said. When asked about the locations, Reddy said cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad or Lavasa (Pune) are under consideration, but the company still has to take a final call on the location. When asked how the company plans to raise the money, he said there is no dearth of investors willing to fund the project.
Narottam Puri, president (medical strategy), Fortis Healthcare, told FE: ? It is too early to comment on the timeframe at this stage, but we are looking at an early entry.? He added that Fortis would like to focus on northern and eastern states, which are currently underserved. About two-thirds of the existing medical and nursing colleges are in southern and western states. Puri said Fortis would prefer a pubic-private partnership mode to provide medical education even though it is open to other arrangements as well.
?Fortis would like the government to play the role of an enabler so that comprehensive health cities can be developed, which can house institutes for medical, nursing, dental and paramedical training,? Puri added.
Max Heathcare could also enter the field in the next two to three years. ?In a way, we are already present in medical education through our DNB programmes (an equivalent of MD). We would like to expand our operations in the next few years, for which different models are being weighed. We are also exploring tie-ups with established players overseas to consolidate our strength in academia,? said Parvez Ahmed, CEO, Max Healthcare.
The entry into medical education would give these players a strong hold over the entire supply chain in the healthcare business. Most of them with their hospital chains as their core business have diversified into allied sectors like health insurance, pharmacy chains and diagnostic clinics with a view to becoming integrated healthcare service providers.
Apollo, for instance, already has a Hospital Educational and Research Foundation and Medvarsity which offer courses in collaboration with organisations such as Royal College of General Practitioners and IRDA on various paramedical courses.
Max founder Analjit Singh is also investing in the proposed second campus (the knowledge city) of Indian School of Business that is scheduled to come up in Mohali. Ratan Jalan, founder, Medium Healthcare Consulting and former CEO of Apollo Health and Lifestyle, said, ?Doctors are the biggest assets of a hospital. Large corporate hospital chains planning significant expansion would definitely like to create their own talent pool and exercise control on the quality of their human resource.?