Silvia Naishtat
11/22/2020 6:01 AM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 11/22/2020 6:01 AM
Due to a tragic circumstance in his life, Claudio Waisbord founded Vittal 33 years ago
from his sickbed
in the Private Hospital of Córdoba.
It was one of the first companies dedicated to medical aid.
Waisbord had come to the country from Israel by then and went to work alongside his father, Simon Waisbord, in the family jewelry store.
One ill-fated day in 1986, thieves
stabbed his marrow in a shootout
while robbing the
store
.
That was his circumstance.
Now 69 years old and in a wheelchair for 34 years, he
decided to transfer
his daughter Mariela, an economist graduated from the University of San Andrés who worked in several companies, including Telefónica.
At the beginning of Vittal there was a cow among friends and they started with a meager budget of
US $ 150,000.
They settled first in Vicente López, a small place with high purchasing power and where families had a telephone at a time when that was a feat.
But with innovation as its leitmotif, ambulances allowed it to differentiate itself at a time when the state had withdrawn from health care.
He was not the only one.
In a market that was quite atomized with some 39 companies,
today there are three firms that stand out.
One of them is Medical Emergencies, which used to belong to the DLJ US investment fund and now belongs to the
UPCN state employees union
led by Andrés Rodríguez.
The other is Acudir
linked to the prepaid OSDE.
Mariela Waisbord says that it was difficult for her to adapt at the beginning to a 24/7 company, of enormous complexity since they
live with the red code in tow.
With the pandemic everything changed suddenly with ambulances circling the city for up to seven hours trying to find a hospital bed for patients, thus becoming a reserve system for hospitals at the peak of the disease
.
They developed the online doctor.
These companies respond to different demands, on the one hand the contracting for protected areas by businesses and large companies, also social and prepaid works for their own transfers and emergencies such as those of the red code that requires being
in less than 8 minutes to side of the life-threatening person.
Provincial tenders and hiring of organizations such as Pami are added.
But the new focus is
to conquer the base of the pyramid
, people who are far from accessing the all-inclusive of prepaid. The strategy is to offer a cheaper fee than the prepaid to the family group and guarantee medical care and before the emergency, the transfer to a hospital.
All this finances were complicated by the arrears in payments, something that they were covering with assistance from the State in salaries for a squad of 2,000 people and the banks that finance them.
Mariela thinks the opportunity is huge.
They have a presence in almost all the provinces and several companies that work in concert, such as the one dedicated to
air transport
with a fleet made up of a specially equipped Cessna Citation jet, a turboprop aircraft and a Bell helicopter.
They reach places that are difficult to access and are key when it comes to bringing organs for transplantation.
Another of its subsidiaries is a firm dedicated to occupational medicine.
But the company's bread and butter is still ambulances and an artificial intelligence system that allows them to simply get there earlier.
Is it in your plans to sell the company? He is asked.
"It is not an option for a family firm like ours," she says very confidently.
