Western-Style Medical Services Are in Demand Overseas : Health: In Moscow there are at least half a dozen foreign-run or joint-venture clinics. More and more high-income local residents use them.

When American Medical Clinics Inc. began developing its first clinic in Moscow in 1989, its goal was to provide Western-style medical services to foreigners who were having trouble getting care in what was then the Soviet capital.

Six years later, the Stamford-based company has three clinics in Russia and plans four more in Eastern Europe.

And what started out as a small outpatient clinic for foreigners has turned into a multi-service medical operation attracting an increasing number of so-called new Russians, or high-income local residents. Last year, about 35% of the clinics’ business came from Russian patients.

“What we’ve done is we’ve packaged one of the greatest assets that we have in American health care, and that is the delivery system . . . where the patient is first . . . and that is a tremendous valuable asset outside our country,” AMC chairman Dennis Sokol said in an interview.

But AMC, which enjoyed a brief monopoly on Western-style care in Moscow, has had to contend with increasing competition since the breakup of the Soviet Union. There are now at least a half-dozen foreign-run or joint-venture clinics in Moscow, including one managed by Columbia-Presbyterian Health Services Inc. and PepsiCo Inc.

AMC and Pepsi are battling in court over AMC’s claims that Pepsi sent people to Moscow to spy on its clinic and stole trade secrets.

Pepsi denies the allegations. A company spokesman called AMC’s claims “a silly case without substance.”

If the competition is fierce, it’s because the demand for Western-style clinics in overseas markets appears to be growing.

“In most of those markets it was state-run health care for the most part, but their economies have reached the point now where it’s really evolved into a state-run system and a private system--and the wealthier can in fact opt out of the public system and get into the private system,” said Bernard McDonagh, a senior health care services analyst at Piper Jaffray Inc., a Minneapolis-based brokerage.

Business at AMC’s clinic has grown steadily. In its first full year of operations, the clinic saw about 6,000 patients. This year, about 35,000 patients will be treated at the clinic in Moscow, and at another AMC clinic in St. Petersburg and a smaller clinic in Alma-Ata, Sokol said.

Services at the clinic include family medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, acute care, prenatal care and vaccinations.

AMC, part of Hospital Corp. International, started developing its Moscow clinic before the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“Finding space during that time was in itself an unbelievable miracle,” Sokol said. “And then to put together a group of medical people that would actually go there, that was a major undertaking. There was very little housing. You couldn’t buy food. It was hard work.”

The company invested more than $1.5 million in the first clinic, which initially treated mostly foreign businessmen, journalists, diplomats and students.

Today, AMC employs a total of about 150 people at its three Russian clinics.

The company, which is privately held, forecasts revenues of about $15 million in 1995, compared with revenues of $250,000 for the last quarter of 1991, the first full quarter of operations for the Moscow clinic, Sokol said.

Whether these U.S.-run clinics can really take off in Russia will depend on the economy and whether residents warm up to the idea of Western medicine, analysts say.

“Essentially, the Russian economy seems to be breaking up at the moment, and as a consequence, the social services provided by the Russian government are nonexistent,” said Tim Robson, a principal at the management consulting firm Towers Perrin in New York.

“If the economy picks back up again and they are able to get more money toward health care, then the care provided by the national health service hospitals will improve.

“If the economy does not improve, then I think there could be a big market for (the American clinics).”