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REVOLUTIONIZING THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

Chief Executive Officer Pramod Balakrishnan and Chief Operating Officer of the Medical Division Dr Dania Alsammarae talk to M. Link about the impact  of innovative healthcare trends, and how Emirates Hospital is delivering them to their patients 

Emirates Hospital Group is synonymous with providing the best healthcare services to their patients. Could you give us an insight into your divisions?

studio-session-207-editPramod Balakrishnan: The Emirates Hospital Group operates two healthcare brands: Emirates  ospitals & Clinics, and Cosmesurge. Emirates Hospitals & Clinics that serve our community’s standard  ealthcare needs by focusing on the delivery of high quality clinical care. Cosmesurge delivers high quality aesthetic medicine, and is possibly the only institutionalised dermatology and plastic surgery practice brand  cross the GCC. It was developed to fulfil the requirements for a high-end brand that stands out for Plastic Surgery in the Middle East. Launched 15 years ago by US trained Dr Max Sawaf, Emirates Hospital Group was sold out completely to Abu Dhabi-based KBBO Investments. The KBBO Group today owns 100 per cent of Emirates Hospital and Cosmesurge and is in the process of hiring a new senior management team to drive future growth and expansion in the GCC and abroad.

What gives Emirates Hospital the competitive edge?

I have been in the region for 25 years and witnessed the struggle families have finding a    good physician. I believe there is a huge trust deficit when it comes to healthcare facilities in the region. That is what we plan to rectify. We plan to grow a hospital and clinic system that patients can fully trust. We aim to provide the best possible quality of healthcare that can be received in the Middle East, and we are quite proud to say that if we cannot deal with it, we are happy to refer the patients to the best doctors we know locally or abroad. Most of our doctors are European or US board certified, and they have worked in leading overseas hospitals, including some physicians who are trained at leading institutions like Harvard Medical School. Even today, Emirates Hospital is still one of the most favoured destinations when it comes to surgeries; I can see a lot of leading DHCC-based surgeons using our Operating Theaters because they know that the quality of our equipment and staff for intra- and post-operative care is fantastic. This makes us a very well utilised facility, and results in a large number of short stay
cases, minimally invasive procedures etc., all rendered by high quality doctors. This is what we are looking to scale up from. I would give full credit to Dr Max Sawaf, the Founder of Emirates Hospital, who was so passionate about quality that he made sure it was ingrained in his service. That is the legacy we are going to continue.

What are your standout services?

Dr Dania Alsammarae: Emirates Hospital provides all of the speciality services you would expect to find in a private world-class North American General Hospital. That covers the spectrum from obstetrics and gynaecology to paediatrics, internal medicine, orthopaedics, vascular, and ear, nose and
throat – with more innovative divisions to be added in the near future with a view to addressing all the needs of our patient population. I have been working in healthcare for 10 years in the UAE, and
what drew me to join the Emirates Hospital Group was quite simply the caliber of their medical professionals. I can walk around our hospital and see patients who have been visiting the same
doctors for years. Some of our doctors treat generations of families, and one of our greatest sources of expansion is simply through word of mouth – with people referring their friends after having a positive experience with us. It’s a quality that is difficult to find, but it is embedded into the culture of Emirates Hospital. One of the responsibilities we have been tasked with is to grow this culture further, so that even more patients in the region have access to our brand of care.

Do you feel the Expo 2020 will affect the health care sector?

Pramod Balakrishnan: One of the aspects we want to fully align ourselves with is the vision of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, in terms of his plans for tourism for Dubai. Medical tourism offers the opportunity to contribute a significant amount to the region’s external visitor goals, and working in synergy with the government promises to benefit service providers and patients in the region. Cosmesurge already has a very healthy share of the medical tourism market. I see patients fly in from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Russia and China, who spend a week in Dubai, enjoy its famous hospitality, and return rejuvenated as the best version of themselves. We are in conversation with doctors in Beverly Hills who have heard
of the Dubai story and are keen to come and practice with us. We have the entire range of services to provide through our fantastic setting, great quality clinics and hospitals and celebrity doctors from
Beverly Hills who will look after you. All of that packaged together is a wonderful tourism story on the Cosmesurge side. I can see us do the same on the Emirates Hospital side, which is done with certain
niche doctors and offerings such as Dentistry. Dr Maher Atassi and Dr Abeer Khayat are some of our other Harvard educated doctors. So by bringing doctors of this caliber, we are ensuing the success of the continued delivery of highly quality case and also contributing to successful inbound medical tourism

What are your expansion goals?

Dr. Dania Alsammarae: We are expanding a lot of our specialities in order to cater for medical tourism. In addition to clinical offerings we have negotiated 5 star hotel packages that allow you and your family to attend a procedure at our hospital, and once you have been medically cleared you are free to return
to your hotel later that day or the next day to begin enjoying the remainder of your stay. You still have the benefit of access to our team of professionals, but at an easy distance that means your precious time off isn’t just a clinical experience. Pramod Balakrishnan: We are fortunate to have very supportive
shareholders who are ready to invest in our growth plans. On our growth strategy, we are focused on growing both organically with green field projects and through M&A. Currently, we have a new
hospital under construction in Jumeirah alongside our existing hospital. This is on the edge of the new canal and the sea and promises to be a great location once the area is fully developed. This will be a
modern state-of-the-art facility, and we will ensure that besides our existing doctors, high quality doctors render additional clinical services. In addition, we have a Medical Centre being  developed on about 18,000 sq. ft. of space on the Palm Island opposite Fairmont Hotel. We also have a similar sized facility being built in Conrad Towers to cater towards the population base living there. Another clinic of the same scale is being established in RAK, in the Julphar Mall overlooking the waterfront.  We are also tapping into Fujairah, which is the second largest bunkering station in the world that has regular ships calling and visitors who require a high quality clinic. Our aim is also to develop a new hospital in Abu Dhabi and a day care surgery centre in Motor City; work on both of these has already begun. Talking about M&A, recently we recently acquired a 100-bed facility, about 90 minutes drive from Vienna. This centre primarily provides intensive rehab services, and 50 per cent is catered towards children with cerebral palsy and other congenital disorders. We feel that this is an underserved space and our goal is to bring this niche service to the Middle East. Besides bringing niche services to the region we will also be looking to  partner with high quality practitioners locally, so as to develop a proper continuum of care of high quality hospitals and clinics. Some of the European /US board certified practitioners have developed strong brands locally and we are looking to support them to help grow their practice across the GCC, and be part of our high quality continuum of care.

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