Apollo Hospitals, Chennai

Apollo Hospitals, Chennai, the flagship Hospital of Apollo Group is also known as the first corporate Hospital started in India. From 150 beds in 1983, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai has expanded its wings to three secondary care, two speciality care and one full-fledged tertiary care Hospital, a network of neighbourhood clinics, a standalone center for preventive cardiac care, four standalone international dental clinics, a string of 24x7 pharmacies and a nursing college. Apollo has a total bed strength of 1000 and 85 per cent occupancy, and staff strength of 3000.

Significant Achievements in the Last Year

The Hospital has performed two successful liver transplantations this year and 2000 by-pass surgeries last year. The Hospital has partnered with US-based Stemcyte for research in stem cell treatments. It was awarded as the 'Overall Best Hospital Of The Year' in corporate category by Express Healthcare.

Adopting New Technologies

The Hospital is expecting Cyber Knife— a robotic radiosurgery system and will be upgrading to 320 slice angio in three months. It has started to implement HIMS (Hospital Information Management System) and plans to go for end-to-end HIMS by this year end.

Expansion Plans

"The new generation of Indian customer tends to relate their service expectation to more personalised levels" - George Eapen CEO Apollo Hospitals, Chennai

Apollo Group plans to expand its Apollo First Med Hospital, a sencondary care hospital in Chennai by adding 500 beds. The Group plans a major expansion in tier II and tier III cities in the name of 'Apollo Reach Hospitals'. Apollo Reach Hospitals will be secondary care Hospitals within the reach of a city or town and hence the name. "This will have both greenfield and brownfield expansion, and the first hospital in this programme would be in Karur, Tamil Nadu," says George Eapen, CEO.

Biggest Challenges

The challenges faced by the Hospital mainly comprise of market, infrastructure and manpower. "The new generation of Indian customer tends to relate their service expectation to more personalised levels and often compare the healthcare provider to other service industries like banks or airlines," says Eapen. This challenge is met by continuous improvements in patient care. Increasing patient inflow and lack of space for further expansion in the main Hospital is another tough challenge. Apollo has opened several clinics, few secondary care hospitals and specialty centres in several parts of Chennai. This has helped them in reducing the patient traffic at the main hospital, yet not losing their customers.

CSR

Apollo has also evolved various CSR activities. The prominent one is the 'Save a Child's Heart' that aids the treatment of children with cardiac problems. The Chennai initiative has already completed over 125 surgeries and has screened over 500 children. Another initiative in the pipeline is 'Hope,' which would look at aiding the treatment of children suffering from blood cancer. The Hospital has a dedicated team of medical professionals to give medical support to victims of any disaster like floods, earthquake and tsunami. They also conduct medical camps in rural and semi-urban areas.