Trinity Hospital and Heart Foundation is in talks with the Oriental Insurance Company to work out a scheme to make healthcare affordable. This would considerably help middle-income group patients in meeting the medical expenses for diabetes and heart ailments.

Dr. B G Muralidhara, chairman and managing director, Trinity Hospital and Heart Foundation said that the hospital has also decided to waive the professional fees and charge only cost of medicines for children suffering from critical heart care problems at its newly introduced paediatrics cardiac care and surgery department and the facility is being equipped to handle heart and lung transplant.

The hospital, which has a less than two percent adult mortality rate, will soon set up a Corpus Fund for poor patients to help seek financial assistance for cardiac surgeries.

In a bid to curtail the rise of diabetes in Bangalore, where one person out of eight was prone to the lifestyle disorder, Trinity Hospital and Heart Foundation has decided to open an exclusive cardio-diabetes unit in its heart centre, where a diabetologist, cardiologist, cardiac surgeon, vascular surgeon and nutritionist will be made available, said Dr. Muralidhara.

Located in south Bangalore, the 70-bed Trinity Hospital set up in early 2001 at a cost of Rs. 10 crore spans an area of 18,000 sq.ft. and has one plus three floors where there are 25 Intensive Care Unit beds, two operation theatres and one cath lab, in addition to other ancillary/paramedical medical services.

The hospital, which is essentially for cardiology, has specialists in handling accident-trauma, and surgeons in orthopaedics, neurology, urology, cancer and gynaecology. Apart from heart and lung transplant procedures, the panel of surgeons plans to have an organ transplant centre in addition to re-implantation and micro vascular surgeries.