India should be focusing on attracting medical tourists for the specialised value that the country’s healthcare sector can provide instead of merely attracting medical tourists for the low-cost healthcare services, said experts at a conference held on the sidelines of a G20 event in Gandhinagar Thursday.
At a roundtable session on ‘Advantage Health Care-India 2023’ that focussed on partnerships and collaborations, industry stakeholders also batted for seamless insurance coverage across borders and better flight connectivity to Ahmedabad.
“My one important suggestion to get patients from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, especially the UAE, is that we should be focusing on insurance companies rather than individuals because insurance companies make the decision. For them, it is an advantage if a patient, instead of getting operated at GCC, comes to India as it will reduce the cost for them (insurance companies) at least by 50 per cent,” Aster DM Healthcare chairman Azad Moopen said.
He added that ministries of health and tourism both at the Central and state governments should focus on GCC as it is the main market with the largest number of Indians. “The flow right now is only from two countries — Oman and Iraq. Other countries such as UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc are just a trickle because they do not know about Indian healthcare and how it has gone up in the past 15-20 years. There is a requirement for us to promote India properly,” Moopen added.
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KEF Holdings and Meitra Hospital chairman Faizal Kottikollon said, “Normally, tourism that is coming to India is for its cost-effectiveness. That has to change… We need to attract high-paying patients to our country instead of depending on only Afghanistan… We should also take it to the next level.”
HCG Hospitals International Marketing vice-president Sanket Arora said they face primarily two practical challenges while doing business in the Gulf region. “First, in terms of capacity building, HCG takes along their own medical experts and registration and licensing at the visiting country for the doctors takes a lot of time. Second, when it comes to insurance, the hospital ends up shouldering the risk of default,” he said.
To solve the bottlenecks, Arora suggested, “Our medical council can liaison with the medical councils of the Gulf countries and hasten the process of licensing and registration so that we can collaborate better. For insurance, if we can have local insurance companies in these countries liaison with our insurance bodies such as IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority) and have a formal-kind of association, that would help us in streamlining and hedging the risks for the hospitals.”
