Metro Pacific starts expansion of healthcare portfolio

The Metro Pacific group is expanding its healthcare portfolio by building a chain of primary care clinics, cancer centers and central laboratories nationwide to complement its growing chain of hospitals.

The plan is to build 30 primary care clinics in five years, 10 cancer centers by 2020—which can expand to 30 over the longer term—and install five centralized laboratory testing hubs in strategic cities, Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc. president Augusto Palisoc Jr. said in a text message on Saturday.

To date, the group has opened a centralized laboratory business in partnership with Japanese firms LSI Medience and Marubeni and will soon open offer its services to hospitals outside its own chain.
Medi Linx Laboratory Inc.—which provides centralized laboratory to hospitals in the Philippines utilizing quality and advanced equipment and technology from Japan—is housed in the Metro Pacific group’s largest hospital Makati Medical Center.

For future labs to be set up, Palisoc said the amount of investments would vary depending on the lab capacity.

A subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corp., LSI Medience provides clinical laboratory testing services, developing, manufacturing and sales of diagnostic reagents and instruments, and the service of analysis for nonclinical and clinical studies in the field of drug development.

The lab venture is 40-percent owned by Metro Pacific and 60-percent owned by the two Japanese partners. LSI and Marubeni own 30 percent each.

For cancer centers, investment in each location is estimated at P300 million.

The group has an existing 50-50 percent joint venture with Lipa Medics on a cancer center in Batangas. Within the next two months, it will open a second one in Central Luzon, Tarlac in partnership with its hospital there, Central Luzon Doctors Hospital. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA