MedLife Revenues Up 73% In Q1

Cornelia Angelescu

MedLife concluded the first quarter of 2009 with 28 million RON in turnover, up by more than 73% from the 16 million RON reported for the corresponding period of 2008. MedLife is regarded as the largest private medical service provider in Romania and is the operator of the largest private hospital in the country - Life Memorial Hospital.

"MedLife welcomes the Health Ministry"s reform plan and the prospective introduction of co-payment, which is applied in most of the developed European countries. The adoption of this system in Romania and the definition of the basic insurance package will undoubtedly be a major step towards improving the quality of medical services in Romania and developing the entire market. For us, this is a year of business consolidation, a year when we focus on maintaining the high quality of our services. The first quarter confirms the results of our initiative: over 10,000 new subscribers and several ongoing contracts," Mihai Marcu told BURSA.

Ciprian Ciobanu, Sales & Marketing Director of MedLife, explained: "The turnover increase much above the growth rate of the overall market is due to the patients" willingness to invest more in quality services provided by highly professional medical staff supported by modern equipment, as well as to the general tendency to replace individual clinics with hospitals and clinics capable of providing integrated services in one place. I mean ambulance services, laboratory services, imagery, hospitalization, recovery and relaxation. The growth of MedLife"s business is also due to the corporate segment, where we managed to win major customers to the loss of our competitors. This segment grew 85% year-on-year."

In the first three months of the year, MedLife had 200,000 patients, mostly to the Life Memorial Hospital and the hyper-clinics Grivita, Unirii and Favorit. In the same period, the company performed some 400,000 medical tests.

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MedLife has projected a year 2009 turnover of 31.5 million EUR driven by a significant increase in the customer base. The company has also budgeted 5 million EUR for developing existing units and opening a new clinic in the Obor-Iancului area in Bucharest. The management expects that the private medical service market in Romania will achieve spectacular growth as co-payment is introduced for the customers of the mandatory State medical insurance. This can stimulate the market to grow by more than 40% in the first year after the introduction of co-payment, compared to the current growth pace of 25-30% per year.

After 13 years in business, MedLife is the largest medical service provider in Romania, having approximately 1,000 employees. The company operates one of the largest private hospitals in the country, Life Memorial, four hyper-clinics, five medical laboratories and medical centres in Cluj Napoca, Arad, Brasov, Ploiesti and Navodari. Additionally, MedLife collaborates with over 120 partner clinics across the country.

"On the corporate segment, MedLife has 170,000 medical service subscribers from 1,800 companies and a market share of 32%," Ciprian Ciobanu told BURSA.