Ghassan M. Hamed

TBY talks Ghassan M. Hamed, Owner & CEO of American Specialty Clinics Center.

The American Specialty Clinics Center is one of the leading medical providers in Oman. How did this initiative start, and what have been some of its major highlights over the past year?

After spending over 20 years in the US, I wanted to move back to the Middle East. I am Syrian, and due to the war in Syria, my alternative was Oman, as it is a safe and quiet country. I started the first branch in Qurum to do what I was doing in the US. I learned science, medicine, and the art of medicine in the US, and I wanted to match it with the culture of the Arab and Gulf countries. I started small as an internal medicine and dental clinic and, upon learning about the need in the country for other specialties, I later expanded the clinic to multiple specialties. I started with specialties in the dental area such as surgery, orthodontics, cosmetic, and whitening and later expanded more into skin services such as dermatology and laser as well as plastic surgery. I was one of the first to have a full-time resident plastic surgeon in Oman. We started with one and later expanded to five resident surgeons. We also added obstetrician and gynecology services as well as aesthetic gynecology services. In addition, we added new services such as physiotherapy, surgery, and pain management using new machines such as laser shock waves, radio frequency, or decompression. We also added other services such as psychology and internal medicine as well as gastroenterology. Gastroenterology normally treats diseases of the intestine and stomach, but we concentrated more on using that service to treat obesity given that there is 20-25% obesity rate in Oman. With all these expansions, our location was not enough, and we had to move. We expanded to Salalah and have one of our biggest branches there. It consists of five huge villas connected to each other. There is peaceful and scenic view in that location. We have retail services in the areas of dental specialties, surgical specialties, laser, cosmetic, obstetrician gynecology, physiotherapy and orthopedic surgery. The last location was in Sohar, where we offer most of the same services; however, we are also working on IVF service in this location.