Creating awareness about cancer, its prevention and early treatment is necessary, particularly among the less privileged since rich anyhow can manage, director of the Pinnacle Hospitals India Ragam Kishore said at a press conference held to dedicate the Healthcare Global Enterprises-Pinnacle Cancer Centre here on Friday.
State-of-the-art facilities available at the hospital would benefit people, Mr. Kishore said at the press conference he addressed along with chairman of HCG B.S. Ajaikumar, oncologist Gurunath Kilara and others.
Explaining about the hospital, they said a True Beam machine for treatment of cancer specific tissue and not affecting the normal tissue around, which is first of its kind in AP and an advanced 16 slice PET CT machine, first in the city, have been installed in the hospital. Quality control is constantly maintained to ensure that the high-end equipment really benefits the patients. There are 100 beds in the hospital.
The hospital would offer multi-disciplinary treatment to the patients on the method followed in the US hospitals. It would have round-the-clock surgical, radiation and medical treatment facilities.
The hospital would follow up the cancer treatment with multi-speciality treatment in cardiology and other specialities.
HCG is penetrating into the tier-II and III cities and is finding a lot of response, Dr. Ajaikumar said. HCG has established hospitals earlier in AP in Vijayawada and Ongole in partnership.
Mr. Kishore said that Pinnacle Hospitals is extending help to Hrudaya organisation in performing heart surgeries on children below three years of age.
So far 300 surgeries have been performed in Hyderabad and the facility would be provided in Visakhapatnam soon.
‘Medical insurance misused’
Medical insurance schemes being offered by the governments are being misused some times and the BPL people for whom they are meant are not the only beneficiaries, said Mr. Ajaikumar .
“We witnessed patients reaching our hospitals in luxury cars like Mercedes for treatment under these schemes. We got such incidents videographed, refused to treat them under the government’s health insurance schemes and also reported the matter to the authorities concerned,” he said. He also pointed out that the reimbursement made to the hospitals under the health insurance schemes was not adequate in the sense that expensive treatment and drugs were not covered and assistance to the patients was thus limited to the amount reimbursed. He found great potential for Visakhapatnam to be developed as a medical tourism destination since it is a beautiful city and got good connectivity.
Twenty per cent of revenue of its Bengaluru hospital is from overseas patients, Mr. Ajaikumar said.
