The Hospital Particular do Algarve Group is preparing to leave the borders of the region where it was created for the first time, twenty years ago, and will build a new hospital unit, from scratch, in Funchal, in the Autonomous Region of Madeira.
João Bacalhau, chairman of the HPA Board of Directors, explained in an interview with Sul Informação, that «although we are based in the Algarve, we have always worked with a significant percentage of patients from outside the region».
Therefore, in the HPA Group's development strategy, he added, "we will always go to places where there are characteristics similar to ours, where we work within our philosophy."
«We have a service provision component that suits the customer who lives in Europe and who can come to us and visit us. In this sense, the Madeira region, having a great wealth in tourism and many foreigners living there, is also an area very similar to ours, with the Algarve, and so this will be our first outing, in terms of investment, the region where the Group was born”.
It is a hospital that will be built from scratch in Funchal, much like the Hospital Particular de Gambelas (in Faro), but with a «slightly larger dimension», and, which «promises, like his predecessor, to change the course of health of the Madeirans».
The new unit is now starting construction and should be inaugurated "at the end of next year". “The regional entities understand that it will be a strategic investment for Madeira”, stressed João Bacalhau.
When the HPA was created, the "main motivation" was "to close a gap in the provision of health care, fundamentally to the floating population of tourists, which the Algarve welcomed". And the investment, made two decades ago, advanced according to three vectors: «quality hotel services, cutting-edge technology and excellent human resources». The same philosophy that still exists today and that will be applied in the new investment in the Hospital Particular do Funchal.
But also in the Algarve region, investments continue, namely in São Brás de Alportel and in the MarShopping shopping centre, associated with IKEA, which is being built next to the Algarve Stadium.
«In the Algarve, we do what the market asks us to do. Regarding São Brás de Alportel, they challenged us to build a unit with people from there and this leads us to share the development of a health unit, the Clínica Sipemor, with professionals who already work there», he revealed João Bacalhau.
Regarding MarShopping, «IKEA challenged us to build a unit there and we are already working on it», added the president of the HPA Group.
Will it be a unit similar to the one you already have in another shopping centre, at AlgarveShopping? "It will be a smaller model, with features more adapted to the idea that IKEA gave us, but also adapted to the survey we made of the needs that will originate there."
But also in the mother unit of the group, the Hospital Particular de Alvor, which celebrated its 13th anniversary on the 20th of May, continues to be strongly committed to investment. «The Alvor Unit, today, is no longer quite the same as it was in the beginning, the size is more than double and has very different areas, such as the Hyperbaric Medicine Unit, or a Hybrid Room, which allows us to be at the forefront of operating room rooms nationwide, allowing different areas to be combined in the same room, so that the patient does not have to move to different spaces. There, the diagnosis is made, the treatment is carried out, due to the equipment with which the room is equipped».
Currently, "hybrid rooms are a global trend, as they allow responding in the same space to surgical and non-surgical intervention procedures, including high definition imaging equipment and increasing patient safety," he explained.
As for the ophthalmology department, headed by specialist physician Jorge Correia, all its equipment was renovated, and it is now possible to have global coverage of this specialty, both at the outpatient clinic (outpatient consultation) and at the surgery level (operating room), including pediatric ophthalmology.
«From Lisbon onwards, there is no Ophthalmology unit as differentiated as ours. It is a very large investment that we have just made now, which also has to do with the challenge that the ophthalmologists who work with us have given us», said João Bacalhau in his statements to Sul Informação.
«Since the beginning, one of our great bets has always been in Ophthalmology. When we opened the Alvor unit 20 years ago, through a partnership with an international group, we acquired the second Lasik nationwide. The investment now made is, in a way, the resumption of a differentiation, which we think, at the level of the Algarve and Alentejo, is quite lacking».
Jorge Correia, the ophthalmologist responsible for this service at the HPA Group, also highlighted the «innovation history» of Ophthalmology in the group, but also referred to the new specialties that are now available, namely Pediatric Ophthalmology and Ocular Diabetes.
In this important area of health, the HPA Group has 15 specialist doctors, a staff that is being reinforced with the entry of three more clinicians.
During the two decades of existence of the HPA Group, the capacity of diagnostic and therapeutic exams was also enhanced – ultrasound, OCT (optical coherence tomography), angiography, retinal scans – which will allow for comprehensive improvement of all screenings and treatments.
And what is the investment in all this? João Bacalhau does not like to talk about values and only says that it is “difficult to say the values, because each department has its own investment values”. “We have to go on doing and apply the resources we have in the development of innovative things, which are important for the population and which captivate different human resources”, he concluded.
The Hospital Particular do Algarve Group currently has three hospitals and five clinics throughout the Algarve, extending to the Monchique mountains and, soon to São Brás de Alportel. About 30 percent of its clients are foreigners, some of them traveling to the Algarve on purpose for different treatments.
Over its 20 years of existence, the Group has been creating, in parallel, companies to support clinical care, which allow for easier articulation between the units, also helping to promote a more personalized service. Examples are Private Ambulances (with 24/XNUMX availability throughout the country) or Parapharmacies.
The HPA Group currently has 1000 employees, performs 300 consultations per year and performs 8 surgeries per year.
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