Menu
The Indian healthcare market is Rs. 15 billion and growing at over 30% every year. Indian private hospitals are increasingly finding a mention in the travel itineraries of foreigners, with the trend of medical tourism catching up in the country. If industry estimates are to be believed, the size of the medical tourism industry stands at Rs 1,200 – Rs 1,500 crore (Rs. 12-15 billion). This is a huge, untapped market, not just for therapeutic medical tourism like ayurveda, but also for curative treatment. India can lead the world in medical and health tourism since we have a tremendous advantage with a large pool of skilled manpower and technological edge.
The countries where medical tourism is being actively promoted include Greece, South Africa, Jordan, India, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. India is a recent entrant into medical tourism. The Indian government predicts that India’s $17-billion-a-year health-care industry could grow 13 per cent in each of the next six years, boosted by medical tourism, which industry watchers say is growing at 30 per cent annually. Price advantage is a major selling point. The slogan, thus is, “First World treatment’ at Third World prices”.
The cost differential across the board is huge: only a tenth and sometimes even a sixteenth of the cost in the West. India has a lot of hospitals offering world class treatments in nearly every medical sector. For long promoted for its cultural and scenic beauty, India is now being put up on international map as a heaven for those seeking quality and affordable healthcare. As Indian corporate hospitals are on par, if not better than the best hospitals in Thailand, Singapore, etc there is scope for improvement, and the country is becoming a preferred medical destination. In addition to the increasingly top class medical care, a big draw for foreign patients is also the very minimal or hardly any wait list as is common in European or American hospitals.
Read this article from Smart Travel Asia (December 2015)
Medical tourism in Asia….Yes, India can be a cheap and safe bet
Combine a holiday with an executive check-up, or surgery, in Thailand, Singapore, or India…..It won’t break the bank and doctors are good. Our guide.
Think of India, and images of ancient temples, tigers, call centres and the IT boom might jump to mind. Health care is also on the list. India has some excellent medical care providers, and foreign patients have been streaming in over the past decade. Accurate figures are hard to come by, but in 2014 an estimated 150,000 medical tourists were treated in India.
According to the Indian Department of Tourism, the average cost of healthcare in India is about one fifth that of the West, multi-organ transplants are done for a tenth the cost in the West and there is “zero waiting time”. A bone marrow transplant in India would cost around US$26,000 in India, compared to about US$250,000 in the US. Hip replacements are also popular (in the UK, patients often have to wait many months on national healthcare waiting lists before they can have the operation, or pay out of their own pocket at private institutions).
