Max Healthcare Expands Bed Capacity to Boost Medical Tourism in India, ETHealthworld
New Delhi: Max Healthcare Institute Ltd is stepping up capacity expansion to cater to demands of “aspirational India” while also boosting medical tourism, targeting to have a total of 10,000 beds over the next 3-4 years , according to its Chairman and Managing Director Abhay Soi.
The company, which had last year announced investment of Rs 6,000 crore by 2028 to add 3,700 beds across key locations in India, has opened a newly built 400-bed tower at its Max Smart Speciality Hospital, Saket in the Capital.
“This is a state-of-the-art facility, with new generation beds for aspirational India, and these will host the best of Indian clinical talent and technology aimed at global medical tourism,” Soi told PTI in an interview.
The company has opened a 300 beds facility in Mumbai, another 200 beds unit at Mohali in Punjab, he said, adding,”in Gurgaon, we are opening another 500 beds very shortly in the next 6-7 months”.
Soi further said,”All the new generation facilities will be catering to and will be spearheading India’s desire to be a global medical tourism hub.”
On the overall bed capacity additions, he said, “Last year we have 5,200 beds, we will be going close to 6,700 beds before the end of the current financial year.”
Soi further said, “The new facilities are aimed at both aspirational India as well as global medical tourism, and we are increasing our capacity to 10,000 beds over the next 3-4 years.”
When asked about investment for the expansion, he said, “We are looking at Rs 4, 000 crore to Rs 5,000 crore over the next few years, but this will be entirely funded through internal accruals.”
Sharing the company’s role in supporting medical tourism in India, Soi said, “We get patients from 145 countries right now. It is a business which is growing at 25 per cent per year for us.”
Bullish on India’s place as a global medical tourist destination, he said “People from the poorest countries, from Sudan, Eastern European cluster to the African cluster come to India and we see a big uptake in these numbers going forward as well.”
He, however, said if India wants to compete against the likes of Turkey, Thailand and some of the other destinations of global medical tourism, then it needs infrastructure which can compete with that.
He said Max Healthcare’s facilities “provide that infrastructure”.
“Our Indian clinical talent is the best. What you need to do is support it with the best-in-class infrastructure and technology and that is exactly what we are doing,” Soi asserted.
The newly opened Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, is the network hospital of Max Healthcare.
The new tower houses over 120 critical care beds, 10 modular operating theatres, and advanced cath labs, enabling high-acuity care across disciplines such as cardiac, oncology, renal and neurosciences, along with gastroenterology, paediatrics, robotic surgery, and organ transplants, the company said.
