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Medical Tourism: India’s New Pulse Point
Moderately conservative figures indicate half a million people travel across
the globe for health purposes. India, with its 5,000 years of medicine, has
just begun to formally, claim its share. In India, mainly tour operators and
health care centers or hospitals offering treatment sustain this segment. Both
these mediums come out of their routine areas of operations to contribute to
this new challenging area.
Spirituality has long since been a strong motivation for travel and is the case
even now. People from developed and affluent countries are moving out of their
own countries to other destinations seeking solitude, natural and holistic remedies
and eco-friendly experiences. Tourism is evolving into a more defined activity
while simultaneously developing various niche areas. Medical tourism is one
such new area, which is ripe with potential.
The Right Components
Keeping all of this in mind a health tourism destination should have all the
right components in place. Apart from advanced healthcare facilities, hospitals,
and availability of doctors, nurses and paramedics the destination should have
moderate weather, excellent hygienic standards, rich attractions for visitors
and a service oriented and hospitable people.
Medical institutions need to be tourism oriented and make
attractive service offerings. Attractive packaging can only take you so far
and to excel institutions need to be sensitive and pre-empt the needs of health
tourists, which may otherwise be outside the normal purview of a hospital. The
foreign visitor is accustomed to a number of comforts, which hospitals would
now need to address by upgrading technology and hiring qualified staff to make
every visitor feel at ease.
All hospitals that want to be centres for medical tourism need to increase their
exposure and be constantly updated on internationally accepted standards of
healthcare delivery thus making servicing international clientele easier.
Tour operators also have an equally important role to play, as they are the
ones putting various packages and products together. They enter into partnerships
with hospitals to offer various treatments to clients while acting as the liaison
between the patient and the hospital. Tour operators market the products, sell
the packages including services like travel documentation, reservations, assistance
at the airport, transfers, accommodation in selected hotels or resorts, escorting,
co ordination with the hospital, local assistance etc. The services of the tour
operator and the hospital should be synchronised so that the patient receives
a string of services making him feel absolutely comfortable.
In order to deliver such a service much co-ordination and communication is necessary
between the tour operator and the hospital. The patient's medical records have
to be collected from abroad, presented to the doctor and the patient kept informed
of his advice. Operators need to have an excellent rapport with hospitals to
ensure unparalleled attention when they recommend patients.
Just as they recommend hotels or resorts based on various
competencies they also need to feel assured to vouch for hospitals based on
their inherent competence. They are partners in putting up the products, marketing
them, taking care of the patients, delivering the medical procedures, providing
them with recuperative holidays in comfortable resorts, coordinating their travel,
seeing them off from the destination and finally following up with them later.
What needs to be understood is that they share a joint responsibility in understanding
customer requirements, communicating with the patients effectively, keeping
the human resources trained, maintaining great hygienic standards, offering
suitable and preferred cuisine and diets and including the most appealing leisure
experiences, all in the same package. These two segments cannot work in isolation
but need to offer an allied product.
Advantages
Medical tourists encounter many problems such as long waiting
periods for surgery and treatments, which are very expensive. Comparatively
India offers world class treatments and a leisure holiday at excellent locations
at almost 50 per cent less than the total sum they would spend on treatment
in their own country. What they can expect in addition is personalised attention
and services all included in the same price making India a very cost-effective
option.
The author is chairman, ATE Group of Companies based in
Kerala
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