India is considered the leading country promoting medical tourism-and now it is moving into a new area of medical outsourcing,” where subcontractors provide services to the overburdened medical care systems in western countries.
India’s National Health Policy declares that treatment of foreign patients is legally an “export” and deemed “eligible for all fiscal incentives extended to export earnings.” Government and private sector studies in India estimate that medical tourism could bring between $1 billion and $2 billion US into the country by 2012. The reports estimate that medical tourism to India is growing by 30 per cent a year. India’s top-rated education system is not only churning out computer programmers and engineers, but an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 doctors and nurses each year.
The largest of the estimated half-dozen medical corporations in India serving medical tourists is Apollo Hospital Enterprises, which treated an estimated 60,000 patients between 2001 and spring 2004. It is Apollo that is aggressively moving into medical outsourcing. Apollo already provides overnight computer services for U.S. insurance companies and hospitals as well as working with big pharmaceutical corporations with drug trials. Dr. Prathap C. Reddy, the chairman of the company, began negotiations in the spring of 2004 with Britain’s National Health Service to work as a subcontractor, to do operations and medical tests for patients at a fraction of the cost in Britain for either government or private care.

Apollo’s business began to grow in the 1990s, with the deregulation of the Indian economy, which drastically cut the bureaucratic barriers to expansion and made it easier to import the most modern medical equipment. The first patients were Indian expatriates who returned home for treatment; major investment houses followed with money and then patients from Europe, the Middle East and Canada began to arrive. Apollo now has 37 hospitals, with about 7,000 beds. The company is in partnership in hospitals in Kuwait, Sri Lanka and Nigeria. Western patients usually get a package deal that includes flights, transfers, hotels, treatment and often a post-operative vacation. Apollo has also reacted to criticism by Indian politicians by expanding its services to India’s millions of poor. It has set aside free beds for those who can’t afford care, has set up a trust fund and is pioneering remote, satellite-linked telemedicine across India.

Health insurance in India is still for the privileged few. However, the increasing healthcare cost and an ageing

population would trigger the growth of health insurance as it’s the most cost-effective method of risk financing.

The consumer psyche is also slowly changing to cover their financial risk due to illnesses or accidents. The

prudent consumer can now pass on a huge unknown cost (cost of illness) for a small known cost (premium to

be paid) to the insurer. Buying health i…

“Unlike Life Insurance, in case of health insurance, there are multiple stakeholders involved and it is important for all of them to work together to make a success of this. This Summit has tried to assemble a confluence of industry players on a common platform to explore and arrive at a consensus on key directions,” said A Vaidheesh, Summit Chairman and Managing Director, Johnson and Johnson Medical. An aging population and an increase in lifestyle diseases will push the demand for hospitali…

Health insurance is an important thing to have if you get ill or injure yourself badly enough to need medical attention. There are many companies that will sell you health insurance. You may even get free health insurance from your employer. If you don’t get free health insurance, or health insurance that’s paid in part by your employer, then you might want to find some good, cheap health insurance to protect you if you get sick. The health insurance cost will depend largely on the type of care …

And the last model is the linked model where the NGO collects the premium and passes it on to insurance companies like the New India Insurance or the National Insurance Company. Patients go to private providers usually and get care. Unfortunately, here it is not a cashless system so they have to pay the provider at the time of illness. The patient then submits the bills to the insurance company via the NGO and receives the reimbursement (usually after a lag period of 1- 3 months). Advantage o…