Česky
His first fateful event was his arrival in Prague in 1984, where he began studying under a scholarship programme at the University of Economics. The second was the opening of the Multiscan radiology centre in Pardubice seventeen years ago, which launched his business in the healthcare sector.
"I only did business in Greece for a very short time. For one year I co-owned a company that supplied ships. Maybe I could have been a shipwright," says Sotirios Zavalianis.
But that wouldn't have resulted in the largest maternity hospital in the region, a renowned perinatology centre or the first paediatric intensive care unit (ICU) in Hořovice. A rehabilitation centre wouldn't have been built in Beroun...
But this is not only my merit. I found the people who created the conditions for it and made it happen. I can't claim to be a great expert on health issues. It may look like it from the results of our holding, but if I didn't have top experts around me who understand and know their field, I wouldn't be able to do much. Before we privatised the hospitals in Beroun and Hořovice, I visited the hospitals only five times.
What led you to buy the two former district hospitals?
I owned a large diagnostic centre where hundreds of thousands of patients came. We diagnosed them well, but we had nowhere else to send them. That's when the idea was born that if we were going to diagnose, we also had to have a place for our patients to get quality care for their health problems. So I decided that we had to have our own hospital.
Since 2007, you have invested two billion crowns in both hospitals. Some of the investments have gone into visionary projects like the aforementioned children's NICU. Other projects have been less conventional - like the new children's group building. Now you're building corporate housing again. Where do you get your visions from?
We don't have staffing issues at the moment. But since I'm planning a big expansion of the hospital, we need to have good conditions to attract new doctors and health professionals. We can give them enormously high salaries. Or we can give them the usual salaries but create attractive working and living conditions. We're currently expanding our children's group. From September, we will increase the capacity from 24 to 50 places, because at the moment the demand exceeds the capacity. We have invested close to 20 million in the children's group building. The expansion will cost us around five to six million crowns. We are also building 87 corporate flats of 50 and 75 square metres. The first half will be ready before Christmas this year. The rest next spring.
And where do you get your visions for all these projects?
I'm not so smart that I have a new vision every day. I have one big, basic vision. That I will provide a service, and it must be of the highest quality. And everything else flows from that core vision. We have to provide a quality service for patients. Both physically and mentally. As the ancient Greeks said, "In a healthy body, a healthy spirit!" That is why I started the construction of the Mental Rehabilitation Centre in Beroun last September.
When will it be ready?
It's a project worth about a billion crowns. If I finance it only from my own resources, we will finish it in six years. If I secure another type of financing, it will be ready in four years. We are considering a part for paediatric patients. The capacity will be one hundred and fifty beds. There's talk of community centres. We have ambitions for our centre to become a methodological centre for other centres being established in Pribram, Kladno and so on. Of course, we don't want to lock up mentally ill people in sanatoriums. But it happens that sometimes they find it difficult to manage their illness without hospitalization. And there are many such cases. When we look at the current options, the situation is desperate. We have top-quality doctors, quality staff, state-of-the-art treatment procedures, but the environment is inadequate.
You mentioned further expansion of the hospital in Hořovice...
Yes, because as the Czech population grows richer and ages, the demand for quality medical care increases, which state-owned hospitals will not be able to provide in the future because they require long-term large investments, and the state is not making those now. I want to turn the hospital in Hořovice into a 21st century hospital. We will supplement what we don't have.
Which specialties, departments or outpatient clinics will be added?
We lack aftercare for patients who are unable to look after themselves during their recovery. We are expanding the maternity ward - building new delivery rooms. Because of the increased age of mothers and therefore the increase in high-risk pregnancies, we want to focus on their care as well, and we will need new facilities for them. We want to expand surgery to other specialties. We are opening a new urology department in early April, and we also want a larger ENT, vascular, etc. We'll also increase the capacity of the OR and expand
ARO. We are planning a new central reception. We will expand the existing hospital by 70 to 80 per cent in the next five years.
Do you have room to expand?
We have the land, the planners, the plans. We know what we want and how we want it.
In your hospitals, you let the top experts design and build the wards they want...
I've found it's impossible to win a war with mercenaries. We didn't build hospitals on paying someone to work for us. Our philosophy is to find a doctor who has a lifelong dream of creating something unique. We'll set the conditions for him to do so. We enable him to fulfill his dream. Our entire hospital is built on people who want to make a difference.
Can you give me an example?
For example, Chief Milan Pastucha, who had the ambition to lead the best implant department in orthopaedics. Now he does over a thousand operations a year. Chief Milena Dokoupilová similarly built a perinatology centre. She had a very clear idea of how it should look and function. She designed it all herself. Dr. Daniel Blažek had a lifelong dream and knew how to care for chronically ill children who need instrumental support of vital functions. Five years ago he established the first pediatric NICU in the country and last year his entire department moved to a larger, new space. Dr Petr Běhounek had ambitions to create a state-of-the-art urology department and we will be opening it at the beginning of April this year. We have managed to attract people who have a lifelong dream, and our hospital looks like it. Dr. Jan Calta wanted to have the best rehabilitation centre in Europe in Beroun and now patients are coming from Prague as well. Dr. Zdeněk Kopečný dreamed of an arthroscopy centre in Beroun and we do over four thousand operations a year. If you put a lot of such human dreams together, you can build a dream hospital. We've managed to create a healthy core and now the self-cleaning processes are underway. Any time a person comes into any department who's messing up the team, they'll fire them. Neither does the director of the hospital in Horovice, nor the director in Beroun. That is why we have also seen a radical reduction in complaints from patients.
Next Tuesday is the final evening of the national round of the Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 competition.
I got an invitation, so yes. But I don't expect it to be me. We have a name, we have economic results, but we don't have exports. In the health sector, we are probably the first to win this prestigious award. I want to show that even if the state and the region do not support us, we can create medical facilities of a very high standard comparable to top facilities abroad. I want to set an example for other entrepreneurs not to be afraid to enter the healthcare sector. We are an example that it is possible to run a successful business even in this specific field.
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