Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) continues to expand the presence of its hospital business in the country as it sets its sights on areas like Cebu and Iloilo.
Augusto Palisco, president at MPIC’s Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc., said the company hopes to have 40 hospitals in seven to eight years with 6,000 bed capacity, as its portfolio includes 19 hospitals with 3,800 beds to date.
“We were able to invest in 19 hospitals in the last 15 years so that’s an average of 1.3 hospitals per year. So if you do the math logically, it will take us another 15 years to get to 40. But because we’ve got experience already in this, it might be shorter at seven to eight years,” he said.
Palisoc said Metro Pacific’s acquisition plans remain opportunistic, ideally the top two hospitals in a particular area.
“But that is sometimes not a luxury that we have. It really depends on what hospital is available and that is what we intend to focus on,” he said.
Palisoc added that MPIC still lacks presence in many areas of the Philippines.
“We are still not in Cebu or Iloilo, which are major areas,” he said.
Palisoc pointed out that MPIC prefers to buy a controlling stake.
On Wednesday, MPIC relaunched its hospital business, branding it as “Metro Pacific Health.”
Manuel Pangilinan, MPIC chairman, said with the rebranding, the group will focus its efforts on “network expansion and rebranding as the heart to the Filipino healthcare.”
“I have high hopes for Metro Pacific Health and I commit to firmly supporting the management teams and employees behind the organization. Together, we will achieve our vision of marking Metro Pacific Health the leading and most valued integrated healthcare network in the Philippines and one of Asia’s most innovative and trusted healthcare providers,” he said.
Pangilinan said the new branding is part of Metro Pacific Health’s blueprint for growth to expand its service to better meet customers’ needs, modernize healthcare with state of the art technology in medical science and data, improve the endtoend customer experience and make world-class quality healthcare more accessible to Filipinos.
Dr. Harish Pillai, Metro Pacific Health chief executive officer, said among the ventures the group is exploring are remote patient monitoring, electronic health record systems and hospital at home programs — “exciting opportunities that will revolutionize patient care in the country.”
“This includes introducing new virtual care platform and upgrading hospital information systems to create an integrated digital access point — with capabilities to digitally search for and schedule appointments, virtually triage symptoms, navigate to the right site of care and access electronic medical records across the entire network,” he said.
