Myles Druckman, the center's chief medical officer, said AMC will open a satellite center in St. Petersburg this summer and, by next fall, expand its Moscow operation into larger offices where it will increase, from 50 to 350 the number of patients it can serve daily.
The Moscow office will also begin to provide outpatient surgery in addition to emergency services, Druckman said.
He said AMC will begin operating a day-care center in Moscow for Russian and foreign children aged three to seven with a private company that was formerly part of the Health, Ministry and now owns rights to the new building that AMC will be leasing.
In addition, the center is organizing a program to train Russian doctors in family practice medicine, Druckman said. Professors from the University of Toronto and an as yet unnamed American university may begin to train Russian graduate students at the First Medical Academy, Russia's most prestigious medical institute, as early as next fall.
Other future expansion projects include creating a Western ambulance service and a Western evacuation service needed to get to remote areas, such as oil fields in Siberia, Druckman said.
AMC, majority owned by Hospital Corporation International of Stamford, Connecticut also plans to open similar facilities throughout the former Soviet Union and elsewhere in the world.
Hospital Corporation International has similar facilities already operating in Latin America and the Middle East. HCI is one of the largest owners of private health care facilities in the United States, according to Bob Courtney, president of AMC Inc.
"We plan to run centers like this in Kiev, Alma Ata, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw and Southeast Asia", Druckman said.
But the center's prices are not cheap.
Membership costs $250 a year per person and $500 per family. A general check-up costs a member $150 for the first visit and $125 from then on. Prices are 30 percent higher for non-members.
While the AMC once enjoyed a monopoly with Moscow's foreign community since it first opened in August 1991, competitors are starting to spring up, such as the European Medical Center, staffed by a French doctor, which was created last summer, and the Sana Medical Center, staffed by Russian and French specialists.
AMC now has seven doctors and a staff of 55.
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