KUALA LUMPUR: While it is going to get busy in the long run completing its Island Medical City project in the next five to 10 years, Island Hospital expects to close 2023 treating 200,000 patients and anticipates the year’s revenue to be above RM600 million, a 50% improvement over last year’s figure.
The private hospital, which is located in George Town, Penang, has started to see the number of patients return to pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels, according to chief of staff Lim Kooi Ling.
“We have reached close to 90,000 patients in the first half of the year and we are confident that we can finish this year with 200,000 patients, with half of them being health travellers from more than 60 countries; namely Indonesia, Singapore and countries from the Middle East,” she told Bernama.
Lim shared that in 2019, Island Hospital had close to 170,000 patients but during Covid-19, with the border lockdown and travel restrictions, the number of patients dwindled.
With that now over, the hospital is getting busier than ever, which is in line with the Penang government’s vision towards making the state the city for medical tourism in Malaysia.
Lim said the hospital has a 50:50 ratio between foreign patients, or “health travellers”, and local patients.
“We offer a significant cost advantage, not only versus other countries like medical tourism hospitals, for example those in Singapore, but also versus hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, ” she said.
“We are planning to have facilities not only for this new hospital (Phase 1) but additional hospital components to achieve a total of 1,000 hospital beds ... we also have in our approved planning 318 medical suites,” she added.
Lim said Phases 1 and 2 have been completed and the hospital will begin constructing Phase 3 next year, pending clearance from the Ministry of Health.
“We have this land bank and we have this ability for this brownfield expansion which all in all will be close to two million square feet of space. It will definitely be something that will keep us busy for the next five to 10 years.
“That is a sign that this concept of Island Medical City is something that we are able to translate into reality,” she said, adding that the gross development value for the whole project is more than RM2 billion.
