From a clinic in Mogappair to a 35-bed hospital in Anna Nagar. Eleven years, one decision repeated.

Dr. Prakash Selvam trained at Ramaiah Medical College in Bangalore, then at CMC Vellore under the doyens of Indian trauma and joint replacement surgery. He spent over a decade at Soundarapandian Bone & Joint Hospital in Annanagar, then joined Apollo Hospitals Greams Road as a Senior Consultant Orthopaedic and Joint Replacement Surgeon.

In 2012, he opened his own clinic in Mogappair. The Tamil Nadu medical establishment found this puzzling. Why leave Apollo? The clinic was small. The waiting room had four chairs. The point was not the room.

By 2018, patients were travelling to the Mogappair clinic from across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and from Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. The Anna Nagar branch opened the same year, anchored in V Block.

Around the same time, Dr. Radhika Venugopal - paediatric hepatologist, recipient of the Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University Medal for the highest D.M. Hepatology marks in 2018 - began the conversation that would become CTS Speciality Hospital. The plan was simple. Two surgeons. One building. One floor where the cardiologist could walk twenty steps to consult the hepatologist about a patient's medication.

The hospital was inaugurated on 23 April 2023 at the V Block address on 4th Main Road. Thirty-five beds. A full operating theatre complex. An on-site lab and pharmacy. Twenty-four consultants across fourteen specialties.

The Tiruvannamalai ortho speciality clinic followed, at Vengikkal on the Kanji-Tiruvannamalai Road, anchored by visiting orthopaedic consultants from Anna Nagar.

There are over thirty multispeciality hospitals within ten kilometres of Anna Nagar. Most are corporate chains. We are not.

What that costs us: scale. What it gives our patients: the surgeon who quoted your procedure is the surgeon performing it. The hepatologist who diagnosed your liver disease reads your follow-up scans herself. There is no general manager between you and the decision-maker.