Paras Hospitals to expand into tier II and III cities

Paras Hospitals is a chain of hospitals known for providing specialized tertiary medical care facilities across different parts of India. It has recently slated a significant investment to the tune of around Rs. 750 crore for further expanding its operations into smaller towns and cities as the third wave of covid-19 pandemic recedes.

It began by starting as a super specialty hospital in Gurgaon in the year 2006, and ever since, Paras Hospital has steadily expanded. Presently it has its presence in Patna, Darbhanga, Panchkula, Udaipur, and Ranchi.

Dr. Dharminder Nagar said, “Be it tier 2 or 3 cities and towns, private healthcare options are very limited across the country, if there at all. Within the next 2-3 years, we are planning to have 3,000 operational beds. Our 200-bed facility in Srinagar should start by October 2022, and a 435-bed hospital in Kanpur by April 2023. We expect to be operating a 400-bed hospital in Ludhiana by February 2025, a 350-bed facility in Meerut by April 2025, and a 300-bed facility in Jammu by September 2025. Panchkula facility is already functional; however, we will be adding 260 beds by April 2025. We might look at Faridabad, too, in the near future. At the macro level as well, we are adjusting our plans to the new reality. For instance, for our new hospital in Kanpur, we would have looked at having 80 ICU or critical care beds out of the 200. Now we are looking to have something around 140.” He is the managing director of Paras Healthcare Group

“Within the next five years or so, the healthcare sector will witness explosive growth as a whole. We have entered an era where health insurance will become a fundamental right in the next 5 to 10 years. Whether it is through private insurance or public insurance, almost every citizen will be covered to some extent. Second, after the reform of the Medical Council of India (MCI), the country is going to produce roughly 100,000 MBBS students a year and 50,000 post-graduates. This is going to push up the availability of doctors all across the country. He stated that demand and supply-side growth would translate into explosive growth for the sector,” he stated.

“Apart from the worrying low doctor-patient ratio, quality cardiologists, oncologists, surgeons, diagnostic techniques remain mostly clustered in specific hospitals in metropolitan cities. There is a need to travel from a remote town during a medical emergency and a stark reality for millions of people, even when they can afford the costs of world-class healthcare. Contrary to common perception, the lack of quality healthcare is not just limited to the economically deprived sections but even the relatively well-to-do people. Even as hospitals come up, reliable medical facilities are scattered and too far and few. Not just rural areas, even smaller towns lack adequate health facilities. Reaching out to the untapped smaller markets outside the metros is a win-win proposition for patients as well as providers,” he commented.

The efforts by the institutions like Paras hospitals can ensure that the high-quality medicine and benefits are not limited to metro cities only, but people from the less privileged areas like those in tier-2 and tier- 3 cities and any rural areas surrounding them have access to these facilities too. The second wave of the covid-19 recently exposed the country’s healthcare sector’s shortfalls, and ever since, several steps have been taken both in the private and public sectors in correcting these fault lines. The industry is likely to see exponential growth even as Russian pharma finds itself dependent on India in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war.