The expansion would widen the total floor area of Nawaloka by 80,000 to 300,000 square feet and would increase the hospitals surgical units to 14.
"We have increased the capacity to reduce the over loading at the (existing) hospital" says Lal Chandrasena, general manager of Nawaloka Hospitals.
Tech Costs
He says the new complex would have the latest technology with 500 million rupees being spent on medical equipment.
Recovering the capital expenditure from investing in a high tech facility remains a challenge.
A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner costs about 100 million rupees says director Harshith Dharmadasa.
"An MRI scan in Sri Lanka is 12,500 rupees, the same scan in Singapore is over 1,000 dollars," says Dharmadasa.
"We can™t recover the cost even in 12 years but we replace the scanner every 6 years. We are giving first world services at third world prices."
Dharmadasa says the costs have to be spread over other services such as room char