Province of « Brasil Centro-Sul »
On Thurday 17 November, the Province of « Brasil Centro-Sul » inaugurated the « Marcelino Champagnat » Hospital, an initiative of the Cultural Association of Parana (APC) which administers the « Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná » (PUCPR) in the city of Curitiba.
Situated beside the Cajuru hospital, the new one has been completed in 18 months. The study and project phase lasted nearly two years, with the help of 13 multidisciplinary teams. The surface area is 27.500 m2, in a building of ten storeys. The hospital will include 118 beds, seven operating rooms, 72 medical consultation offices, with 24hr out of 24 teams in geriatrics, neurology, cardiology, general surgery, orthopedics and anesthesia.
To care for the patients, there will be 400 doctors and 330 persons in the work teams. For certain services, attention to the sick will be uninterrupted, day and night. One can rely on the services of medium and highly complex surgery, with the most recent instruments, and a staff duly trained to supply a local lack, which obliges certain sick people to go as far as S. Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. All sections will be equipped with a bilingual service in Portuguese and English. In the opinion of the Director General of the new hospital, Dr. Claudio Lubascher, « we want to be a reference hospital; in terms of clinical assistance and equipment technology, we have nothing to envy in the best hospitals in the country. »
The hospital represents an investment of about sixty million ‘reais’, coming from the APA – juridical entity of PUC -, enterprises of image diagnosis which will work in the building and other sources.
For philanthropic groups, the fact of investing in private units helps diminish the deficit caused by the maintenance of the Unique Health System (SUS), directed to poor populations. « Our activity in the health domain consacrates more than 80% of our budget to caring for the public through the SUS. Everyone knows that payment according to the government scale involves a chronic deficit », says Prof. Marco Antônio Barbosa Cândido, executive superintendant of the APC. According to him, the new hospital, oriented towards care of the private individual and those who subscribe to the accords, has as aim to bring a perspective of economic equilibrium and durability to the system, which is philanthropic, without distributing the profits; the profit is re-invested in the care activities.
This initiative, which is an important step in the domain of technology and culture, will at the same time offer an ambit suitable for the interns of the PUC and will help maintain the services offered in the other hospitals administered by the APC.