Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. (ADR) (NYSE:FMS) has acquired a 70% equity stake in Wuhua Hospital, a Chinese healthcare provider. The latter is a leading supplier of dialysis services and products while the latter specializes in hemodialysis and chronic disease management. Completion of the acquisition was done last month. With the Chinese acquisition, Fresenius Medical Care aims to offer high standard chronic disease management and renal care services to local communities in China.
Kidney ailment patients
In Kunming City where Wuhua Hospital is located, the population of the region is approximately 900,000 people. Kunming City is the capital of south-west China’s Yunnan Province. After being founded more than three decades ago, Wuhua Hospital provides care and treatment to over 8,000 patients suffering from chronic diseases and 70 patients suffering from kidney ailments requiring dialysis. This is in addition to a wide range of services including stomatology, physiotherapy, traditional Chinese medicine, dermatology, gynecology, surgery, nephrology and internal medicine.
As a private Grade II hospital, Wuhua Hospital stands to benefit from a new policy that has been enacted by China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission and China State Council. The new policy requires the gradual migration of chronic disease management from the outpatient departments of larger hospitals to community hospitals and Grade II hospitals.
Business expansion
Being mainland China’s first joint venture hospital, Wuhua Hospital plans to continue offering chronic disease management services while at the same time improving service delivery, quality control and enhancing competency. There are also plans for the expansion of the HD business and this will include developing opportunities for vascular surgery and peritoneal dialysis.
With Fresenius as its new partner, Wuhua Hospital stands to benefit from not just capital infusion but from transfer of skills and expertise. Currently, Fresenus is the biggest provider in the world of services and products that renal disease patients require. Across the globe, there are approximately 3 million people requiring regular dialysis and through its more than 3,000 dialysis clinics, Fresenius offers dialysis treatment to patients numbering slightly over 300,000.
