Good service at the right price

For Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC), HMC is one of its largest openings so far and helps support its claim that it will raise the bar for patient care in the United Arab Emirates. “We are proud to have Dr. Sulaiman Al-Habib Medical Centre (HMC), a leading multi-speciality centre as one of our partners,” says Dr. Muhadditha Al-Hashimi, CEO, Dubai Healthcare City. “HMC’s facilities and world renowned professionals will support DHCC’s dedication to provide excellence in-patient care.”

HMC is promising that it will offer a wide array of specialties and sub specialities, all provided to what it describes as, ‘international healthcare standards.’ Amongst the services that the centre plans to introduce are genetic screening and interventional and teleradiology services.

The medical centre’s diagnostic equipment will, include ’64 slice’ CT, 1.5 Teslar MRI and mammography screening. “By providing the highest possible level of healthcare in the region we will give patients and consumers a reason to stay in the Middle East for their healthcare needs and concerns,” says Dr. Sulaiman Abdulaziz Al-Habib, chairman, Dr. Sulaiman Al-Habib Medical Centre.

The opening of the centre promises to be merely phase one of a plan to establish the HMC brand all over Dubai. The new clinic will be focused on outpatient care and will employ around 85 specialists and sub-specialists.

Around six months after the opening of the outpatient clinic, it will be strengthened by the addition of a day surgery centre. The centre will offer general, plastic and laproscopic surgery. “Up to 70-80% of procedures can be done a day surgery basis,” says James Gordon Pincock, CEO of HMC.

“These kinds of practices still need to be introduced into the UAE in a sophisticated way, however. For the public and for business, we will offer quick turnaround, quick procedures and top quality care.”

Around 18-24 months after the outpatient clinic’s initial opening, HMC intends to establish a hospital. In the interim, it will have operating agreements with nearby hospitals. “From a business strategy point of view, this is the proper way to go about setting up,” says Pincock. “Start with the outpatient clinic, do the day hospital programme then move to the hospital programme, all of it within the capabilities of the Al-Habib Corporation.”

Pincock is well aware, however, that traveling to Dubai Healthcare City will not always be convenient or practical for patients in congested Dubai. That is why, within an unspecified timeframe, Pincock plans to establish community clinics throughout Dubai. Those clinics will be established close to Dubai’s major population centres and will act as a first point of call for patients.

“For those routine ailments, they can touch base [with these clinics],” explains Pincock. “Patients will only need to come here [Dubai Healthcare City] when they need to see a sub specialist.”

Dubai Healthcare City has adopted Joint Commission International standards of accreditation as its benchmark target. Pincock states that: “Within two years of opening, we will meet that standard of practice.”

The new clinic has been built according to American Institute of Architecture standards for healthcare facilities design. As people are hired and credentialed, as IT systems are set up and as equipment is installed, HMC is building and operating with the JCI standards in mind. “You actually build to the standard; you don’t just operate and hope to achieve it, you have to plan it,” Pincock says.

Meeting the right standards is one key part of the healthcare equation. Another is finding the right people and expertise to provide the desired services in the first place.

Here, HMC has taken an approach that its CEO believes to be unique in the Middle East. Rather than trying to create specialist services itself from a standing start, HMC has taken a partnership approach, where it identifies experts in a field and invites them to come and practice under its roof.

“We’re looking to partner internationally, so we’ve brought a French company to run the labs, a German company to run the radiology services, we’re bringing an Australian group to do plastic surgery, we’re bringing an American partner to do orthopaedics and an American group to do urology and urological cancer treatment,” Pincock explains.

“We are going after the best in the world and contracting with them to come and work with us under the Habib umbrella. We’re hiring the international standards, hiring brands that already have huge reputations in the international field and bringing them here.”

The CEO is quick to add that Dr Sulaiman Al-Habib Medical Centre will not simply be a, “rental agency” leasing out its floor space. HMC will have full ownership and control of the clinic and will provide core services and resources. Partners will come in as operators working under strict contracts on a revenue sharing basis.

“The people coming in are coming in as operators,” says Pincock. “It’s like outsourcing a piece of your business. You just go out and pick the best. We have absolute management control.”

Amongst the companies that HMC will be working with is GE Healthcare, which has provided around US $25 million worth of radiology equipment to the clinic. GE will work with HMC on a revenue sharing basis.

Al-Habib’s outsourcing approach also creates the potential for its specialities to be offered as services to third parties. For example, an agreement has been struck with a French specialist firm to provide pathology services for the clinic.

It will be logical to make those services available to other healthcare providers in Dubai that currently have to send certain tests abroad for analysis. “This tieup will bring resources that otherwise would not have been available in Dubai here, and available not just for our clinic but for other people to use as well,” says Pincock.

HMC has a similar view on its radiology services, which will be run by a German group. The two companies plan to offer a teleradiology service, which would allow radiological patient images such as x-rays, CTs and MRIs to be broadcast over the internet to HMC for analysis in Dubai.

“We’ve had discussions [with the business partner] about accepting a contract from Bosnia. We can bring those tests here online, have them read by our radiologists, report back and for the partner this is attractive. It’s good business,” the CEO explains.

HMC is clear that its commitment to Dubai is a long term one. First comes the establishment of its clinic later this month, which should be followed by a day surgery centre within six months. A hospital and a network of community clinics will join them later in subsequent phases of development. Ultimately, HMC aims to replicate in the UAE what it has done in Saudi Arabia and give the Dubai market high quality service at a competitive price.

“The prices in the market here are not exorbitant when you look at international prices,” says Pincock. “The problem is that patients have been paying those prices and not getting quality care. Come to us and you can count on the quality of the practice, you can count on the quality of the training of the physicians and nurses that we have here. You’re going to get value for money.”