Leading London trust to open India and Dubai hospitals

Hospitals will be established in the UAE and India through KCH Management. Last year the commercial arm opened a clinic in Abu Dhabi.

The two 15 year contracts will be paid for by private investment and King’s will not be contributing financially.

KCH Management commercial director Richard Miller said revenue from the sites would go back into NHS care.

He told HSJ: “It generates a significant revenue stream to bring back to the UK to put back into NHS healthcare and that’s the underlying reason why we’re doing it. You know the state we’re all in at the moment in terms of having money available to invest in new equipment, etcetera.

“It’s extremely challenging at the moment, the sort of money we’re talking about here will make a big difference.”

HSJ reported earlier this month that trusts have been finding capital funding for estates repairs and replacements more difficult to access from commissioners and the DH.

The UAE hospital in Dubai will have 80-100 beds and King’s is working with emerging markets investment management company Ashmore Group. Several clinics will also be opened towards the end of 2016 and in 2017. The hospital is due to open in 2018.

The hospital will offer four main specialties – paediatrics; endocrinology; orthopaedics; and obstetrics and gynaecology – as well as other acute and general medical services.

The trust will recruit clinicians from across the NHS. There will also be recruitment for local clinicians in India.

In India, King’s has signed a deal with Indo UK Healthcare Private to create an institute of health in New Chandigarh. This is backed by £100m of private investment to build a 500 bed hospital, trauma centre and day surgery centre.

King’s will provide clinical governance including setting up clinical boards to oversee the work of the hospitals and clinics, which will be made up of a majority of the trust’s staff.

The trust will make revenue through a combination of a fixed fee, a profit share arrangement, equity stake and consultancy work. This will include helping with the design of the hospitals.

King’s will not manage the day to day running of the hospitals but will instead set out a governance procedure for how the hospitals should be run, and will do regular audits to make sure they are keeping within guidelines.

Mr Miller said the deal was “predicated on us protecting our name. We’re not giving the brand away cheaply by any stretch of the imagination.”

The trust hopes to generate £40m over 15 years from the deals. Mr Miller said they would generate “significant revenue stream to bring back to the UK”.

Mr Miller said King’s would have the “final say” over anything that “impacts on patient safety, on ethics, on clinical procedures”.

He added: “We’re building in a raft of protective measures here to make sure some people can’t go off and start practising or undertaking operations that we wouldn’t want to be associated with.”

The trust also has exit rights if the two hospitals “do not comply with what we want them to comply with”.

Mr Miller said “big UK institutions” should do more international work “because we’ve got these fantastic institutions which people want but we’ve not really taken it seriously, or made the effort to do the marketing and get out there and sell what is a fantastic brand”.

He added: “If you go to the UAE, the Americans and Germans have been there for decades.”