Back Wockhardt can now take in insured US patients
| Ties up with Companion Global Healthcare. |
“The hospitals have been receiving uninsured patients from the US. This opens up a new opportunity.” – Mr Vishal Bali
Our Bureau
Bangalore, Nov. 19
If there is one domestic sector that may not have to worry about the global downturn, it could be the healthcare industry.
Hospitals in the country are betting on the downturn in the global economy to give a boost to medical tourism. They hope to see a 30 per cent rise in patients from the US and Europe, seeking medical procedures at 10-25 per cent of the cost abroad.
Wockhardt Hospitals, which gets an estimated 3,500 international patients a year, said it can now take in insured US patients, too, after a tie up with Companion Global Healthcare Inc.
Members of Bluecross Blueshield and Bluechoice Healthplan of South Carolina, US, can now get treated at Wockhardt’s Bangalore and Mumbai facilities, Mr Vishal Bali, CEO of Wockhardt Hospitals, announced here on Tuesday. “The hospitals have been receiving uninsured patients from the US. This opens up a new opportunity,” he said.
Companion Global, a US-based interface for medical tourism services, channelises its clientele to JCI-accredited hospitals across the world. Wockhardt’s Bangalore facilities were recently accredited by JCI International, while Mumbai hospital was accredited four years ago. Medical tourism costs in India are said to be far lower than in Asian destinations like Singapore or Thailand, with comparable quality of service. Western patients seek advanced procedures for heart, knee, spine and organ transplants and would be paying $9,000-12,000 on an average in India, compared to US costs of $55,000-75,000. Cost apart, Indian hospitals are also scaling up the standard of their services and getting international accreditations to add to the comfort level of international patients. This would also encourage more insurance majors to tie up with Indian hospitals, he said.
Wockhardt, which gets 50 per cent of international patients from the US or Europe, has started a division to cater to them. Foreign patients form 10 per cent of the total patients, which is close to a million, Mr Bali said, adding, “We are concentrating on the US and Europe.”
A Deloitte study said 7.5 lakh US citizens sought treatment abroad in 2007 and this would increase to 60 lakh by 2010. Indian hospitals, he said, would benefit as insurance premia in the US, in particular, rose and the number of uninsured or underinsured people also grew.
India received 4.5 lakh medical tourists overall last year, a number just second to the 10 lakh of Thailand and above Singapore’s 4.2 lakh.
India, according to a 2007 McKinsey report, will have a $1.5-billion (around Rs 6,750 crore) share of the total medical tourism industry (Deloitte puts it at $60 billion) by 2011-12.
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