Ayala expands presence in healthcare segment

Conglomerate Ayala Corp. seeks to bring its healthcare business closer to the grassroots by pilot-testing a new unit that combines pharmaceutical retailing with medical services.

In a briefing on Tuesday, AC managing director Paolo Borromeo said the group had looked at similar retail clinics in other populous countries like the United States and India and found the potential good enough to bring to the Philippines.

The group recently built the first two of such retail clinics under the brand “Family Doc”—one in Imus, Cavite and another in Las Pinas.

“If successful, we’ll launch it on a larger scale,” Borromeo said.

Ideally, Borromeo said the conglomerate should roll out over 100 such “Family Doc” clinics in three years.

Ayala’s retail clinics are smaller than those abroad, occupying only around 100 square meters in each location and employing a small medical team—a doctor, pharmacist and nurses in two shifts.

Borromeo said the goal was to bring healthcare services closer to middle-income communities and locate these outlets in smaller strip-malls.

To recall, the Ayala group ventured into the affordable pharmaceutical retailing business last year with the acquisition of a 50-percent stake in the Generika group, operator of the country’s third largest drugstore chain and a pioneer in the local distribution of generic medicine. This chain now has 570 stores.

In 2014, property unit Ayala Land Inc. teamed up with the Mercado medical group to build a chain of hospitals and satellite clinics under the “QualiMed” brand.