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Medical Tourism : Why India? |
India’s transformation into a healthy growing
economy is attributable entirely to the intellectual
prowess. Having made gainful forays into Information
Technology, research, media, entertainment and many
other sectors, India has truly reached an important
break through as a knowledge power by being acknowledged
by the evolved economies as a destination for healthcare. |
The health infra structure in India from a pan-India perspective, presently has more than half a million doctors employed in over 5,097 hospitals. Additionally there are 0.75 million nurses who look after 870,000 hospital beds. India's corporate hospitals are fully equipped with state-of –the art technology, are up market and efficient. While costs may be the key driver for this sector, low cost high-value specialized medical treatment may not be the only reasons for the influx of medical tourists in India. Clinical statistics in cardiac surgeries for instance show that success rates are 98.7% in India (higher than the 97.5% reported by US healthcare) and some hospitals like the Escots hospital is only one of a handful of treatment facilities worldwide that specializes in robotic surgery.
This is why international patients who are either unable to wait (UK), unable to pay (USA) or unable to find the expertise (as in African or Middle Eastern countries) choose India for their health needs.
The USA has always celebrated the excellent quality of medical education and training in India. Almost 20% of medical professionals in the USA are of Indian origin. Similarly nurses of Indian origin have also been welcome not only in the USA but world over. Another reassuring fact for visiting US patients is that many Indian doctors who have further trained and lived in the USA have now returned to settle and serve in their country.
In a heartening move to regulate, the National
Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare
Providers (NABH) has launched an accreditation programe
for secondary and tertiary hospitals in 2006. NABH
with 120 qualified assessors on its panel has so
far granted accreditation to 11 hospitals and 43
are in various stages of evaluation. The regulatory
body aims to provide a supportive role to patients
to harmonize documentation systems to be at par
with international standards. The growing confidence
on the Indian health care system has been ratified
by the fact that international traffic for health
care is rising at the rate of 15% annually and has
clocked 200,000 medical tourists in 2006. A CII-Mckinsey
report predicts that this sector is set to reach
$100 Billion in 2012.