India’s largest private hospital in Faridabad looks at a launch date this August

The first phase of the 2,400-bed Amrita Hospitals in Faridabad, a jumbo facility spread across 133 acres of land and being touted as India’s largest private hospital, is set to get operational this August, with 500 beds.

With a total built-up area of one crore square feet, the mammoth facility has been undergoing construction since 2016.

The total project cost for the jumbo facility is estimated at more than Rs 2,000 crore and the medical college attached to it will induct 150 MBBS students and 100 post-graduation (MS/MD) students annually.

Importantly, the hospital with 534 critical care beds will also have the largest intensive and critical care unit in the country.

This is the second large-scale Amrita Hospital in India after the 1,200-bed centre in Kochi, Kerala, that was established 25 years ago by the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, a spiritual and humanitarian organisation.

“When we set out to establish the hospital, the idea was not to come up with the largest private hospital in India,” said Dr. Prem Nair, Group Medical Director, Amrita Hospitals, at the pre-launch event of the hospital on June 16, “but as our focus was also on creating an academic and research centre for doctors and allied health professionals, the facility turned into a massive project.”

As of now, Government medical college in Kozhikode with over 3,025 beds is the largest government hospital in India while Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore with 2,305 beds is the largest private hospital.

81 specialties, 8 Centres of Excellence

The 81 specialties at the hospital in Faridabad will include eight Centres of Excellence (CoEs) related to the fields of oncology, cardiac sciences, neurosciences, gastro-sciences, renal sciences, bone diseases, transplants, and mother & child care.

The hospital will become operational in stages, with 500 beds opening in August this year. In two years, this number will rise to 750 beds and to 1,000 beds in five years.

There is no fixed timeline for all the 2,400 beds to get operational, but the hospital authorities said that efforts are on to expand the services to full capacity at the earliest. In all, there would be 1,000 beds in private wards.

When fully operational, the hospital will have a staff of 10,000 people, including over 800 doctors.

According to Dr Sanjeev K Singh, medical director of the hospital, it will be a world-class institution, the likes of which the country has not seen before, both in terms of scale as well as medical excellence.

Other interesting features of the hospital include 64 modular operation theatres, advanced imaging services, a fully automated robotic laboratory, high-precision radiation oncology, the most updated nuclear medicine, and state-of-the-art cardiac and interventional cath labs for clinical services.

“Cutting-edge medical research will be a strong thrust area, with a dedicated research block spread across a seven-floor building with a focus on identifying newer diagnostic markers, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and bioinformatics,” said Singh.

The hospital is also in the process of entering into research collaborations with several foreign universities and hospitals. Considering the country’s harrowing experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital also plans to have the largest facility in the country to tackle infectious diseases, said Singh.

The facility looks to set up India’s largest pediatric super-specialty centre and is also investing heavily in a comprehensive transplant program that will be among the biggest in the country.

The hospital will be among the very few facilities in the country to conduct hand transplants, a specialty first introduced by Amrita Hospital in Kochi.

Patient catchment area spread across north India

Nair said that the hospital’s patient catchment area would extend all over North India and North-East India.

“We are hoping to get patients in large numbers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab and Haryana, apart from Delhi and the national capital region,” he said.

He pointed out that the centre is also India’s largest green-building healthcare project with a low carbon footprint and will be an end-to-end paperless facility, with zero waste discharge.

“There is also a helipad on the campus for swift transport of patients and a 498- room guest house where attendants accompanying the patients can stay,” he said.