From the hospitals in Lombardy and Emilia Romagna to the collaboration with the Benfratelli of Palermo for the management of pediatric cardiac surgery. From the student house in the old Galeazzi in Milan plans for growth abroad with the management and construction of new hospitals in the Middle East and North Africa. “Years ago we said to ourselves: if the healthcare market is difficult, we have to make a sacrifice in order to be more attractive than others. Now that it’s done, we have a strong competitive position. Continuing to grow is still a very exciting challenge for us”. Paolo Rotelli says, vice president of Velca, the reference holding company of the San Donato group, one of the main Italian healthcare companies, with 54 structures, including 18 hospitals.
Is this why you are now also thinking about new acquisitions?
“We look with interest to the whole national territory to grow and we would like to demonstrate it once again with facts this year, beyond Emilia Romagna and Lombardy, where the group is present. As always, we have many dossiers on the table, but I am confident that by the end of the year we will present some results. In terms of buying. However, we must not forget that we have recently invested almost half a billion in the Galeazzi hospital in Milan and almost 120 million in the San Raffaele iceberg, the new surgical and emergency center, also in the Lombard capital. For this reason, at the moment, we are also concentrating on reducing debt. We want to be flawless.”
In addition to the acquisitions, with the management of the Palermo hospital ward you are also experimenting with a new public-private partnership model…
“What makes a difference in healthcare is not whether the operating room is bigger or the light is different. 90% of the output is not due to the technology, but to the skill of the operator, the doctor, the staff. And that’s what we’re doing in Palermo, where we bring the professionals of the San Donato group, saving many families the expensive and tiring journeys of hope. The goal is to create a center in Palermo in less than three years that can go ahead on its own and that is a candidate to become a reference center for all of central-southern Italy”.
Do you think this model could then be exported to other regions?
“The project immediately met the interest of other regions as well. From September we will sit down at the table to figure out what to do. For us, Campania and Puglia are very interesting, which are two regions from which many of our patients already come from outside the region. And this is also why we are convinced of the success of our partnerships”.
You are also growing a lot abroad…
“Yes, in Iraq, in Egypt, in Libya, in Tunisia and in Saudi Arabia. Abroad we build and manage, bringing our experience and professionalism. And as soon as the war ends we will also be ready to give concrete help in the reconstruction of Ukraine”.
In the vision of growth there is also that of diversifying your activities…
“We are expanding our activities to include construction, energy, consulting and procurement. The idea is to transform group costs into opportunities. We have sufficient turnover that can serve as a start-up for a whole series of companies. Should we build the new Galeazzi? So, it makes sense to own a construction company to do it. A company that does procurement? If it succeeds, in a period of inflation, in giving good economic results for the San Donato group, it can also be interesting for other realities”.
How do you see the future of Italian healthcare?
“I think we will go more and more towards a French/Anglo-Saxon model with a very strong presence of private insurance. This is because unfortunately the endowment of the National Health Fund has not increased more than inflation. There is a basic problem: we have the oldest population in Europe and we have very little public spending on GDP. When patients look for a public health service and can’t find it, they look for it first out of pocket, i.e. by paying it directly, and then they look for private insurance to support it. The direction will be this”.