Wockhardt Hospitals, India's leading super speciality hospital chain, today announced its foray into Saurashtra through an association with N.M. Virani Hospital to establish a world-class super speciality hospital in Rajkot.

Shri Indubhai Vora, Managing Trustee, Ashok Gondhia Memorial Trust, which currently manages N.M. Virani Hospital, said: "Over the last 21 years, we have helped the people of Saurashtra get good secondary healthcare. However, we would now want this region to have a world-class tertiary hospital so that our people no longer have to travel to other cities for advanced procedures."

"Wockhardt Hospitals has created patient-centred super speciality healthcare in various cities and we therefore selected them for this responsibility. The 200-bed hospital has been renamed N.M. Virani Wockhardt Hospital," he added.

Shri Vishal Bali, Chief Executive Officer of Wockhardt Hospitals, said: "We bring to Rajkot our rich experience of over 18 years in quality healthcare delivery in India. This region has been lacking in tertiary (high-end) healthcare facilities and our focus will be to bring these advancements for better patient care in this region."

"The hospital will be a boon to patients who now travel to Ahmedabad and Mumbai for advanced procedures in cardiology, cardiac surgery, neurosurgery and orthopaedics," Shri Bali said. "Our research indicates that more than 10,000 patients from Saurashtra travel outside the region to receive high end care every year," he said.

This association has multiple advantages to patients in Saurashtra who will now be able to access super speciality treatment in Rajkot at more affordable costs when compared to Ahmedabad or Mumbai. Patients' relatives will also escape the inconvenience of travel to other cities. Wockhardt's national faculty of leading specialists in all these specialities will be assisting their counterparts at Rajkot to ensure the transfer of all pioneering achievements in patient care. This clinical exchange has enabled Wockhardt Hospitals and its panel of doctors to excel across all locations where similar hospitals have been established.

The core staff at N.M. Virani Wockhardt Hospital will be trained at Wockhardt Hospitals locations across India to acquire skills and service quality, which is at par with the best in the country.

"We observe an increasing trend of Indian doctors who have spent many years in US / UK and other parts of the world keen to return to super speciality hospitals in India. Lately many such doctors have joined our group and we will create similar opportunity for doctors from this region to come back to Saurashtra," Shri Bali said.

Wockhardt Hospitals will bring to patients in Saurashtra the rich medical expertise from its exclusive association with Harvard Medical International (HMI), the international arm of Harvard Medical School, USA. The association provides Wockhardt, access to the latest clinical protocols, innovations and patient care practices from 17 prestigious Harvard-affiliated hospitals in the US, including the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Beth Israel Hospital.

This association with Harvard has enabled Wockhardt Hospitals in Mumbai to earn the distinction of being the first super speciality hospital in South Asia to achieve accreditation from the Joint Commission International (JCI), which is the gold standard in healthcare quality in the world. JCI is the international arm of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organisations, which evaluates the standards of US hospitals. Wockhardt Hospitals in Mumbai is one among only 72 hospitals around the world to get this recognition. The accreditation requires a hospital to comply with almost 1,300 measurable standards. The new super speciality hospital in Rajkot will benefit from the standards achieved at Wockhardt Hospitals in Mumbai.

Wockhardt Hospitals's consultants and surgeons are recognised both within India and across the world for their pioneering contribution in advanced super speciality treatment. Wockhardt's dedicated super speciality hospitals in Bangalore, Mumbai, Nagpur and Hyderabad have success rates comparable to the best in the world. Wockhardt Hospitals are also recognized as the global pioneers of conscious off-pump coronary bypass surgery, popularly called 'awake heart surgery,' considered as the most evolved expertise in super speciality cardiac surgery.

Wockhardt currently runs a cluster of super speciality hospitals in Mumbai and Bangalore dedicated to cardiology, neurology, orthopaedics, ophthalmology and minimal access surgery. It also runs dedicated heart hospitals in Bangalore, Nagpur and Hyderabad and a super speciality kidney hospital in Kolkata.