Medica, a group of super-speciality hospitals with wings in Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha, would soon usher in better healthcare services in the city.

The group would start a multi-speciality hospital in collaboration with the local Mediversal Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, signalling the second biggest private investment in healthcare in the state after Paras HMRI Hospital.

Medica runs a 400-bed hospital in Calcutta, 300-bed facility in Ranchi, 150-bed hospital in Tinsukia (Assam), 150-bed hospital at Jamshedpur and two hospitals, a 150-bed and a 200-bed, at Siliguri (Bengal). It has launched two more hospitals in Odisha recently with support of the Tata group.

“Medica is going to start a multi-speciality hospital in Patna offering treatment for specific disciplines such as neurology and orthopaedics among others. The hospital would be later developed into a super-speciality hospital,” said Anand Prakash Srivastava, spokesperson, Medica Hospitals Pvt. Ltd.

Talking about the group’s foray in the state, Srivastava said: “Our group is already spreading wings in the entire eastern zone. Starting from Calcutta, we have spread out to Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam and now, we want to make our services available to the people of this state also. We conducted a survey here and found a great scope of private investment in the health sector. Our Calcutta hospital gets around 150 patients from Bihar every month and a similar number of patients arrive at our Ranchi hospital too. People of this state are forced to go to Delhi and Vellore among other places for treatment and end up shelling out extra money on accommodation among other things. So we thought why not treat patients of this state in their own place.”

Health department sources touted Medica group’s arrival in the state a big achievement for the state given the fact that the proposals regarding the Medanta group to start a super-speciality hospital for cardiology disorders on public-private partnership mode has not yet materialised.

Principal secretary, health, Deepak Kumar, however, said his department had started taking necessary measures to woo private players in the health sector in the state. “We have formulated the health policy to woo private players in the health sector. We only have to get the final nod from the finance and industries departments,” he said.

He added: “We want to motivate private players in the healthcare sector because we feel that even if we try our best, we cannot provide all facilities in government hospitals like private hospitals do. So we want to motivate private players. We also want that more and more private players open their hospitals in Bihar because only then they would feel the competition and keep their treatment costs low.”