Category Archives: Reports,Features, Statistics

Patients mostly come for heart surgery, knee transplant, cosmetic surgery and dental care.

The medical tourism market in India is projected to hit $3.9 billion mark this year having grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 27 per cent over the last three years, according to a joint report by consultancy firm KPMG and industry body FICCI.

The report says inflow of medical tourists is expected to cross 320 million by 2015 compared with 85 million in 2012.

The medical tourism industry in India gets maximum patients for heart surgery, knee transplant, cosmetic surgery and dental care as the cost of treatment in India is considered to be the lowest in Asia, much lower than Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong, the report stated.

A key competitive advantage India has in medical tourism is the cost effectiveness it has to offer to its patients.

“A person coming to India for his/her medical treatment can have savings anywhere in the range of 30 to 70 per cent. Even if we consider the ticket expenses and accommodation expenses along with the treatment cost, the overall expenditure would be lower than the treatment cost in the UK or the US or many other countries,” the report stated.

The report, however, points out that India has a fragmented approach where individual hospitals have been promoting themselves as the hospital destinations. The medical-value-travel stakeholders in India need to consolidate their efforts and strategise on how to leverage the available opportunities, it said.

Besides the western markets, the SAARC countries have been an important source of medical tourists for India.

Amit Mookim, partner and head of healthcare practices, KPMG India, said, “The medical tourism landscape in Asia is continually evolving as price no longer remains the only important consideration; focus has now shifted to diversity in offerings, niche offerings and even customised luxury.”

He noted that India does face stiff competition in the segment from countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. One disadvantage faced by Indian medical tourism industry is the lack of special visa rules for patients but it counters this with alternative therapy offerings like yoga, meditation, ayurveda, and other traditional methods of treatment that attract tourists from European nations and the Middle East to India.

The report says that the country needs to work on increasing efficiency at the immigration to make the travelling experience hassle free for patients and also better infrastructure in terms of highways and roads would add to the overall satisfaction of medical tourists. Affordable hotels, availability of language interpreters are a few areas which also need to be given significant consideration to increase medical tourism in India.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)

source: http://www.vccircle.com / VCCircle / Home> Others /b y Jasleen Kaur Batra / Monday – September 01st, 2014

Turkey has emerged as one of the top destinations for medical tourism, ranking sixth in the world for medical tourism, according to fresh figures.

Out of roughly 35 million tourists who visited the country last year, around 188,095 came for surgical procedures such as hair transplants, liposuction and cancer treatment, according to the latest figures by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). The number of medical tourists who visited Turkey in the first six months of 2014 totaled 162,445 with revenues reaching $328 million, high compared to the amount spent by holiday tourists.

“Currently, over 1,000 patients travel to Turkey every year to take advantage of the medical services we offer,” said Fatih Öztürk, the project manager of VisitandCare.com, a patient and doctor matching service that helps patients from the Middle East and Europe find a doctor.

“They are mostly from western European, countries like the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands, as well as from Libya and United Arab Emirates,” said Öztürk, regarding the clientele. Öztürk said there are various factors behind Turkey’s appeal to foreign clientele.

“People from countries with heavily congested health systems welcome the opportunity to choose the time of their surgery together and saving 40 to 70 percent, which is more affordable than European countries. While those from less-developed nations are attracted by Western-trained medics and new private healthcare services available in Turkey,” he said, in addition to Turkey being a central tourist attraction.

Turkey’s Health Ministry said the country has great advantages in terms of health tourism due to its convenient geographic location.

“To meet the changing domestic needs as well as to take advantage of health tourism, private hospitals and health centers have been established all over the country. The country has made significant improvements and has begun to compete with countries such as India, Malaysia, Thailand and Hungary which are strong in this sector,” the ministry said in a 2012 evaluation report on medical tourism in Turkey.

Foreign institutions, including Malaysian sovereign fund Khazanah Nasional, Qatar’s First Investment Bank, Argus Capital Partners and the World Bank’s International Finance Corp (IFC) have invested money into Turkey’s healthcare industry.

In conjunction with a public-private partnership, Turkey is building medical facilities that will see the state rent city hospitals to private sector companies who will then run these facilities for the next 25 years.

Ankara’s Doctors’ Union President Özden Şener said patients from western countries, whose medical insurance do not cover Orthodontic treatment and cosmetic surgery, prefer Turkey due to its low-cost labor and affordable holiday prices. Şener, however, claimed many patients come from war-torn countries such as Syria, Libya and Palestine and this has put pressure on the health system with doctors seeing as many as 100 patients per day.

Tourism income in Turkey increased by 7.9 percent in the second quarter of 2014 to reach $9 billion, compared to the same quarter of last year, figures from the Turkish Statistical Institute showed. Meanwhile, foreign visitors accounted for 84.5 percent of this income and Turkish citizens living abroad accounted for the rest.

“Turkey is considering employing foreign doctors in order to fill the current vacancies in public hospitals, with Greek  professionals being one of their main targets,” Health Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu said last month, while private hospitals are already hiring foreign doctors.

source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com / Hurriyet Daily News / Homepage> Life> Health / Ankara – Anadolu Agency / August 28th, 2014

Hyderabad :

With a view to boost the image of Hyderabad globally, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao hinted at corporate hospitals to capitalise on their expertise and infrastructure in order to tap patients around the world. KCR was attending the launch of Apollo Hospitals ‘eACCESS’ in the city to mark the 26th anniversary of the group on Wednesday.

Touted as a new age technology for round-the-clock monitoring of 500 to 1,000 patients housed in far-away Intensive Care Units (ICUs) by a common pool of intensivists stationed at a command centre, eACCESS is an Apollo Hospitals initiative developed in collaboration with Philips.

Explaining the potential of medical tourism adding a feather to Hyderabad’s brand image, KCR said, “The city can take a lead in medical tourism and the best example has been shown by Apollo Hospitals Group, which attracts patients from 150 countries.”

While underscoring that the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) would attract more people to Hyderabad in addition to the existing 1.25 crore people estimated during the recent intensive household survey, he urged Apollo Hospital chairman Dr Prathap C Reddy to scale up services in the city to meet needs of the growing populace.

KCR also referred to his trips to Singapore and Malaysia and reiterated that the new Telangana government would frame the world’s best industrial policy and provide corruption-free administration for investors from all over the world to flock to Hyderabad.

Telangana deputy chief minister and health minister Dr T. Rajaiah suggested corporate hospitals like Apollo to take up campaign against superstitions, besides health awareness campaigns for preventing diseases in rural areas as part of their corporate social responsibility. “Just like our government’s ‘Mana Vuru Mana Pranalika’, hospital groups like Apollo too should come out with their action plan to benefit rural people,” he said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Hyderabad / TNN / August 28th, 2014