Private healthcare providers have proposed investments worth ₹2,000 crore more in this year’s Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) compared to last year, state government officials gloated.
At Thursday’s health and health services session, 23 healthcare groups proposed expressions of interest (EOI) worth ₹9,698 crore and almost 31,000 new employment opportunities.
“This is ₹2,000 crore more than what was pledged last year,” a senior state health department official said at the session.
Among those who proposed investment are Belle Vue and Ambuja Neotia Healthcare (₹1,500 crore each); Narayana Health (₹1,000 crore; JIS Group (₹750 crore) and Woodlands Hospital (₹530 crore).
However, healthcare industry sources said there were doubts about how much of these promises would translate into reality.
“We must see how much growth the healthcare infrastructure in Bengal records in two to three years. Most of these investments are promised for that period,” said the CEO of a hospital chain.
State government officials said some of the investment promises made last year have started to be implemented over the past few months.
Devi Shetty, chairman of Narayana Health, said the first phase of an 1100-bed new hospital in New Town that would come up at ₹1,000 crore would start this month.
“We will start the construction work this month. It will be in two phases. In the
first phase, there would be 500 beds and we plan to commission it in 30 months,” said Shetty.
Ambuja Neotia Healthcare is setting up two multispeciality hospitals in Calcutta that would have 1,000 beds. There would also be two mother and child care units in Calcutta and Durgapur, each with 100 beds.
“Work for two hospitals has already started and for two others it will start this year,” said Parthiv Neotia, executive director of Ambuja Neotia Healthcare.
The JIS Group will set up a medical college in Hooghly for ₹750 crore.
“It will come up in two years,” said Simarpreet Singh, director, JIS School of Medical Science and Research.
Speaking at the BGBS session on Thursday, Dilip Jose, CEO and MD, Manipal Health Enterprises, said there should be a collaboration between public and private sector in Bengal’s healthcare.
“There are 97,000 government hospital beds in Bengal, around eight to nine times of any private hospital group. There is a huge potential if we look at what we can do together,” said Jose, whose group has promised ₹250 crore in investments.
“There will be several benefits of the collaboration. If the average length of stay can be reduced at the hospitals that would improve the productivity of existing infrastructure,” he said.
Jose also called for data portability, training and value-based care as the collaboration’s key components.
Jayanta Roy, managing director of Peerless General Finance & Investment, said Bengal should create a niche speciality in healthcare.
“Calcutta should position itself in cancer treatment like some other places people go for cardiac treatment. There are good institutes here for cancer care,” said Roy. “We need to market healthcare sector of Bengal. People in the neighbouring countries should know about us,” he said.
Peerless has promised an investment of ₹400 crore. The group’s cancer treatment unit inside the premises of Peerless Hospital would be operational by 2026, said Roy.
