Ayala plans expansion of healthcare business

According to a business report of Philstar, Conglomerate Ayala Corp. (AC) seeks to expand and complete its healthcare portfolio by venturing into medicine manufacturing and healthcare finance.

AC chief finance officer Jose Teodoro Limcaoco said the healthcare industry is comprised of three segments – medicines, healthcare and healthcare finance. With the medicine component, Ayala Healthcare holdings have distribution through Generika Drugstore, which currently has over 670 stores nationwide. In the field of healthcare, AC has primary care clinics under the brand Family DOC, which has six clinics located across Cavite and Las Piñas, as well as a partnership with the Mercado medical group for hospitals and satellite clinics under the QualiMed brand.

“To me the third leg that is missing is what I call healthcare finance. If you get sick who pays? You have health insurance right. But only four million Filipinos are covered by insurance out of 100 million. That’s private insurance. And then there’s Philhealth but you have to be employed to have Philhealth,” Limcaoco said

“We just know that there’s something missing there. So we think there’s space but we don’t know how to get into it. We’re still looking,” he said.

Ayala Healthcare Holdings, Inc. was established in June 2015 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ayala Corporation.
Last week, AC again made strides in expanding its healthcare portfolio with the investment of Ayala Healthcare Holdings Inc. in Wellbridge Health Inc., a startup that owns and operates MedGrocer.

MedGrocer is an ePharmacy and medicine benefits management service that allows customers to order medicines via the internet and have the medicines delivered directly to them.

Limcaoco said the 17-percent stake it acquired would help complement AC’s existing healthcare business.
AC plans to bring the Generika network to 1,000 stores and FamilyDOC Clinics to 100 by 2020.

This venture into the healthcare sector, as Limcaoco said is because of “the need for affordable and accessible healthcare in the country.”
“One, our healthcare system here is (in a state wherein) a lot of people don’t have access to affordable healthcare. You hear a lot of stories of people destroying a lot of families because someone gets sick or all the savings get depleted because someone gets sick,” he said.

Source: philstar, achealth.com