02.18.09
Report on California Health Plans and Insurers
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Fortis enters into management contract with Apollo Modi Hospital
NEW DELHI: Hospital chain Fortis Healthcare has entered into a management contract with Apollo Modi Hospital, a 200-bed high-end hospital in Rajasthan, earlier run by rival firm Apollo Hospitals. This is the second instance in less than a month where Fortis Healthcare has acquired businesses from its competitor, Apollo Hospitals.In January, the Delhi-based company bought 56% stake in the 150-bed Apollo RM, a privately-held franchisee hospital of Apollo in Bangalore. In 2005, Fortis had also taken over the management control of La Femme, a high-end maternity and women healthcare hospital in Delhi earlier run by Apollo.
Apollo Modi, which will now be renamed as Fortis Modi Hospital, will help Fortis to increase its presence in western region of India where it has less presence. When contacted, Fortis Healthcare's spokesman declined to comment.
In just a month's time, Fortis has increased it bed strength across its hospital network by 20% to over 3,000 through the inorganic route. Besides acquiring Apollo RM, it also bought 58% stake in Clinique Darne, a 120-bed hospital in Mauritius, along with a Mauritius-based business group last month.
Meanwhile, Fortis has renamed the cardiac care unit at Chennai's Malar Hospital (acquired in 2007) as Escorts Heart Institute and plans to leverage brand Escorts to promote its cardiac care programme in its newly acquired hospitals. Fortis Healthcare CEO and MD Shivinder Singh earlier told ET, "We have a good cardiac team in Malar Hospital who can go with the reputation of the Escorts brand. We may consider expanding Escorts brand in other new hospitals including Clinique Darne in Mauritius."
Mr Singh added Escorts Hospital has managed 100% occupancy for the first time almost two years after renowned cardiologist Dr Naresh Trehan made a controversial exit. This has been possible due to expansion of medical services, improvement in efficiency and induction of several reputed doctors.
"Escorts' occupancy had dropped to 60-65% from around 88% during Dr Trehan's tenure, which has moved up over 97% for the last few weeks," said Mr Singh. Dr Trehans' departure in May 2007, along with some doctors and several nurses adversely impacted the patient inflow at Escorts. The hospital say these nurses were surplus staff.
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iSoft to introduce Lorenzo in two years
CHENNAI: iSoft is expecting to roll out its flagship healthcare product Lorenzo for the Indian market in two years. It considers the subscription model appropriate for the sub-continent."We have a broad range of products, which cover most areas of heathcare IT. We are doing a little new R&D on our products which will be the future, we believe, largely built here in Chennai are opening up an extension into Bangalore for Lorenzo," iSoft CTO Brian Cohen told ET.
Claiming the response to Lorenzo has been excellent, he said "its still early days here because its still been rolled out in its first sights in the UK in two hospitals, two trusts primary care trust and an acute hospital trust. They are now using Lorenzo, live, in a limited way before they start to extend it."
In Holland and Germany, the scale of implementation has been wider and the system has been extended to the general practise community as well. For example, in Germany, it has been running in about 14 wards in a teaching hospital.
There are still a lot of areas that we need to put functionality into Lorenzo to meet the various regional requirements. "So, we havent really rolled it out into India yet. That would be coming down the track, once we have all the extra requirements," Mr Cohen said.
Estimating to roll it out in India within two years, he said "we have to make sure that we get the infrastructure requirements right, the model right. The deployment model in India would be more appropriate here to offer it as a subscription service from a large data centre or several data centres so that there is very low initial cost to start using it."
As it is an incremental cost based on the number of the patients that are seen by the hospital, it doesnt need huge investment on maintenance and support. "Lorenzo definitely supports that because the model in the UK is to manage the whole of the North West and north east which is about 60% of the UK from datacentre," Mr Cohen said.
On Monday, the IBA Health Group company signed $11.3 million contracts with two major hospital groups in the Netherlands.
iSoft employs 2200 people at two centres of excellence in Bangalore and Chennai. "We have been growing here as well even though the economic climate is going the other way and we are still hiring and in three months we are looking for more staff," he said adding it has plans to hire 600 people in a years time.
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Fortis expanding Escorts as separate unit
NEW DELHI: Hospital chain Fortis Healthcare is expanding its flagship cardiac hospital brand Escorts Heart Institutes' as a separate unit within its newly acquired hospitals.It has already opened Escorts Heart Institute in Chennai's Malar Hospital and plans to position the brand as a cardiac speciality unit in its other recently acquired multispeciality hospitals.
Fortis is expanding its presence both within India and abroad. In 2007, Fortis acquired Malar Hospital and last month forayed into the international market by acquiring Clinique Darne in Mauritius. In January it also bought over Bangalore-based Apollo RM Hospital.
Fortis Healthcare CEO and MD Shivinder Singh said, "We have a good cardiac team in Malar Hospital who can go with the reputation of the Escorts brand. We may consider expanding Escorts brand in other new hospitals including Clinique Darne in Mauritius."
Meanwhile, almost two years after renowned cardiologist Dr Naresh Trehan left Escorts Heart Institute along with several doctors, the hospital has for the first time managed full occupancy. This has been possible due to expansion of medical services and induction of reputed doctors, including Escorts' co-founder Dr Ashok Seth who was roped in from Max India.
"Escorts' occupancy had dropped to 60-65% from around 88% during Dr Trehan's tenure. Now it has moved up over 97% for the last few weeks as the whole team has delivered," said Mr Singh. In May 2007, Dr Trehan made a controversial exit from Escorts. His departure, along with several doctors and over 80 nurses adversely impacted patient inflow at Escorts.
Last August, Escorts roped in Dr Ashok Seth after he had fallen out with the owners of Max Healthcare. Incidentally, Dr Trehan and Dr Seth were the co-founders of Escorts before Dr Seth moved out to start Max Devki Devi Heart & Vascular Institute under Max Group owner Analjit Singh.
Incidentally, the number of cardiac care treatment in Max India dropped 17% to 1,600 during the quarter ended December 31, 2008 from the same period in 2007.
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Trivitron JV Chennai facility commences production
CHENNAI: Aloka Trivitron Medical Technologies, a medical equipment manufacturing joint venture of Aloka, Japan and Trivitron healthcare on Monday commenced production of Aloka SSD 500, portable black and white ultrasound scanner from its facility at Poonamallee in Chennai. It aims to roll out world class medical equipment at most effective costs to national and international customers.Trivitron MD, Dr G.S.K. Velu said the JVs aim is to offer products of high quality suited to the needs of developing countries on a most cost effective basis. Apart from tapping the domestic market, the products will be exported to developing/developed countries across the world.
The core vision of Trivitron healthcare is to bring world-class medical technology within the reach of medical professionals all over the world. It also aims to set up advanced facilities for the manufacture of laboratory reagents for routine and special diagnostics testing in JV with Bio-systems, Spain and operation theatre Lights in tie up with Brandon Medical, U.K.
He said Chennai facility will adhere to international standards such as ISO 9000-2001, ISO 13485 for medical product manufacturing and will also be compliant with requirements for CE, US FDA and Japan MITI certifications. An array of indigenous products from electronic equipment to consumables will be introduced under Pride series.
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