November the 29th, 2021 - The largest private Croatian hospital is set to be constructed in the City of Zagreb. What Zagreb and the Croatian state failed to do itself will now be made private.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, Poslovni Dnevnik has found out that in 2023, a new Special Hospital for Orthopedics and Traumatology, Akromion, will spring up in the Dugave settlement in Novi Zagreb near the exit towards Velika Gorica. It will be the largest private Croatian hospital, larger than most public hospitals, and Osteon gradnja plans to invest 160m kuna in this massive project.
Orthopedist Nikola Cicak, the director of Osteon and one of the founders of the Akromion Hospital in Krapinske Toplice, explains why Akromion is moving to Zagreb.
"Akromion has become a respectable orthopedic hospital in this part of Europe since its founding, we've found ourselves in a situation where we have simply outgrown the space we use in Krapinske Toplice. It became cramped for us, we lacked space in the wards, to the extent that we had to postpone some procedures because we had nowhere to place the patients after they had their operations. We have nowhere to expand in that location, and we decided to build a hospital that would suit our needs better.
The second reason lies in the location itself, Zagreb is more accessible to our patients who come from all over Croatia, but also from other countries, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, we also have Croats living abroad and foreigners living in Croatia who need such services. Zagreb will be a better address for our further expansion of business,'' explained Nikola Cicak, who founded Akromion with his fellow doctors back in 2008 in a facility that they rented from the Special Hospital for Medical Rehabilitation in Krapinske Toplice.
In terms of revenue and number of employees, Akromion is the largest private orthopedic hospital in the entire country, and in 2019 it generated 40.5 million kuna in revenue.
It is an institution that specialises in the treatment of injuries and diseases of the locomotor system, with a wide range of surgical procedures on offer, from arthroscopy to the installation of artificial joints and reconstruction, and in addition they are engaged in scientific work and education. Apart from Krapinske Toplice and Zagreb, they also provide services in locations in Dalmatia, more precisely in Split and Zadar.
They have a total of 70 full-time employees, and since its establishment until today, 15,248 operations, ie 249,111 medical services, have been performed in Akromion, and more than 30,000 services are performed on an annual basis, including approximately 1,300 operations.
The up and coming largest Croatian private hospital is being built over 8.5 thousand square metres of land, which Osteon bought from private owners for a total of 12.5 million kuna. The hospital itself will cover about 10 thousand square metres, it will have five floors including a garage, and the total value of the investment is 160 million kuna. Cicak explained how the project was put together after around a dozen previously planned versions, because it was done in such a way that the hospital staff gave instructions to the architects.
"We gave them instructions on what we need, so that they could build a hospital according to our needs, and not to adapt the hospital to the facility, as was the case, for example, during the adaptation of the Akromion facility in Krapinske Toplice. When the pandemic first struck we were sort of in a dilemma as to how to proceed, they asked me if we were still going to go for it, so I said yes, let’s go, now is the right time. We worked on the main project for a year and a half, and that was finished this summer,'' revealed Cicak.
This spring, the company Osteon gradnja was first established, which will be in charge of the project, and the financial side of the construction will be settled with the help of a bank loan that has yet to be selected. There are four banks in the ''game'' - Zagrebacka banka (Zaba), PBZ, Erste and HBOR, all of which offer excellent loan conditions.
Back at the beginning of October, an application for a building permit was submitted, and a contractor was selected, and the Akromion Hospital will be built by the company Kamgrad. The plan is for the facility to open its doors in 2023.
Instead of the current three operating rooms, which is the situation at Akromion in Krapinske Toplice, there will be four rooms in the largest private Croatian hospital in Dugave. Another magnetic resonance imaging device is also being made available, as well as CT scanners which they currently don't have. The hospital, which will extend through one entire department, is also being expanded.
"It will be like patients who go to spas to recover after their operations, which is convenient especially after some procedures such as the installation of a new hip or knee prosthesis. With such procedures, it takes time for the patient to return to a normal life, and whoever wants to return home "healthy" can stay in our hospital in order to do just that,'' Cicak stated.
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