Apollo medical centre in Oman granted hospital status

Oman: Recently, a Ministry of Health clearance has led to an up gradation of the Apollo Medical Centre, which has now acquired a hospital status. To be inaugurated on the 27th of April, the Muscat Apollo presently has 25 specialised in-house doctors and eight super speciality visiting consultants from Apollo India, for Neurology, Oncology and Orthopaedics.

"The upgraded facility will introduce new specialities, such as a hearing aid service, thalassemia clinic for children, gastroenterology, bariatric surgery, urology, full range of orthopaedic surgeries, including joint replacement and arthroscopy. We are looking at having a reproductive medicine clinic, a paediatric cardiac clinic and medical screening services," announced V.T Saileswaran, Managing Director , Apollo Hospital. Talking to Times of Oman, he further added, "The Apollo Hospital will offer specific and updated clinical bandwidth and we will not let down (people's) expectations."

Times of Oman reports that he also mentioned that the hospital would adopt a phased approach to expansion , and may in the near future have a presence across the board; while being open to clinical alliances, meanwhile.

The Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals elaborated saying, while remaining a preferred provider of high end healthcare in India, Oman was seeing it as a first decade healthcare venture. "We felt the need for change, especially in terms of changing and challenging disease patterns and hence upgraded the Apollo Medical Centre to again, the first ever Apollo Hospital in Middle East." said Mr Saileswaran.

Calling healthcare in the Sultanate as more defined, he said this was the case because most of the tertiary level care was with the government and the private sector focused on the elective side or secondary healthcare.Defining healthcare as shared responsibility, Mr.Saileswaran felt that there was need for proper integration of private and public sectors.

Mr. Saileswaran informed that Oman's development in healthcare, according to the WHO, was to be considered as one of the best in the world.

"I guess we are just second to Canada in terms of a social healthcare system. All the credit goes to the visionary leaders we have in Oman, who have made Oman's healthcare delivery model, which is a benchmark for many others," Mr. Saileswaran noted.

Talking on the Apollo Hospital Muscat's ties with the Indian hospital chain, he said; "We are the Apollo subset in Oman and they remain our mentors with a track record of treating over 40m patients. The entire clinical pathway, visiting consultants, clinical quality monitors are all connected to Apollo India and we just do not have to integrate, the connect is always on."