Healthcare Tourism in India

Healthcare tourism is a term that has risen from the rapid growth of international healthcare where people from all around the world are traveling to other countries to obtain general medical surgery, cosmetic plastic surgery and dental surgery at a fraction of the cost of healthcare in the USA, Canada or UK. At the same time as receiving surgery abroad, patients can experience the excitement and adventure of the cultural attractions their destination country offers.

There are many reasons for the increased popularity of medical travel services:

* Exorbitant healthcare costs in industrialized nations
* Long waiting lists for surgery in countries offering socialized healthcare
* Ease and affordability of international travel
* Favorable currency exchange rates in foreign countries resulting in low cost surgery
* Rapidly improving technology and standards of care in many countries
* Proven safety of healthcare in select foreign nations
* International accreditation of foreign hospitals
* U.S., U.K. and Australian board certified surgeons operating in select foreign countries

More and more people are traveling abroad as an affordable, enjoyable, and safe alternative to having medical, dental, and cosmetic surgical procedures done in their home countries.

Currently medical tourism patients are traveling in large numbers to India where the quality of affordable healthcare is equal to anywhere else in the world and yet the cost is significantly lower. India also offers numerous options for touring, sight-seeing, shopping, exploring, and relaxing.

It has been mentioned that overseas healthcare, sometimes referred to as medical tourism, medical travel or health tourism, is expected to become a multi-billion dollar industry by 2012. Whether you call it medical tourism, medical travel or health tourism, the concept is the same. It appears as though this concept of traveling abroad to receive health care is going to become a viable option for many years to come.

Many options exist for the medical tourism patient - from purely elective procedures such as face lift, rhinoplasty, blepharoplasty, liposuction, tummy tuck, breast augmentation, orthodontics and LASIK, to more serious procedures such as knee replacement, hip replacement, gastric bypass surgery and cardiac bypass surgery. Medical tourists can now obtain essentially any type of medical or surgical procedure abroad in a safe and effective manner for a fraction of the cost that they would face in America or England. The cost savings are enormous!

Although "medical tourism" has been the descriptor for this new emerging industry, it is important to comprehend the seriousness of receiving high quality medical care and then allowing your body to recuperate from the surgery. The vacation part of the process should be viewed as the least important factor.

Healthcare Insurance in India

The health care system in India is characterised by multiple systems of
medicine, mixed ownership patterns and different kinds of delivery structures.
Public sector ownership is divided between central and state governments,
municipal and Panchayat local governments. Public health facilities include
teaching hospitals, secondary level hospitals, first-level referral hospitals (CHCs
or rural hospitals), dispensaries; primary health centres (PHCs), sub-centres,
and health posts. Also included are public facilities for selected occupational
groups like organized work force (ESI), defence, government employees
(CGHS), railways, post and telegraph and mines among others. The private
sector (for profit and not for profit) is the dominant sector with 50 per cent of
people seeking indoor care and around 60 to 70 per cent of those seeking
ambulatory care (or outpatient care) from private health facilities. While India
has made significant gains in terms of health indicators - demographic,
infrastructural and epidemiological (See Tables 1 and 2), it continues to
grapple with newer challenges. Not only have communicable diseases
persisted over time but some of them like malaria have also developed
insecticide-resistant vectors while others like tuberculosis are becoming
increasingly drug resistant. HIV / AIDS has of late assumed extremely virulent
proportions. The 1990s have also seen an increase in mortality on account of
non-communicable diseases arising as a result of lifestyle changes. The
country is now in the midst of a dual disease burden of communicable and
noncommunicable diseases. This is coupled with spiralling health costs, high
financial burden on the poor and erosion in their incomes.

Healthcare in urban India

Behaviors between middle- and upper-class citizens from the four largest metros in India - Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Mumbai - appear to vary widely. In general, those in Chennai appear to be more “westernized” in their attitude towards medical treatment, i.e. they are least likely to cite a chemist/pharmacist or the Internet as the source most frequently used to obtain health-related information, and are most likely to cite allopathy while least likely to cite homeopathy as their preferred system of medical treatment. Those in Kolkata appear to have a strong relationship with their healthcare provider but are generally more traditional in their attitudes towards medical treatment. Those in Delhi are most likely to have a positive view of medical care in India but also tend to be more traditional in their attitudes towards medical treatment. Finally, those in Mumbai are most likely to have a negative view on healthcare in India and also appear to have a weak relationship with their healthcare providers.

Health care in India

Health care in India

Indigenous or traditional medical practitioners continue to practice throughout the country. The two main forms of traditional medicine practiced are the ayurvedic (meaning science of life) system, which deals with causes, symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment based on all aspects of well-being (mental, physical, and spiritual), and the unani (so-called Galenic medicine) herbal medical practice. A vaidya is a practitioner of the ayurvedic tradition, and a hakim (Arabic for a Muslim physician) is a practitioner of the unani tradition. These professions are frequently hereditary. A variety of institutions offer training in indigenous medical practice. Only in the late 1970s did official health policy refer to any form of integration between Western-oriented medical personnel and indigenous medical practitioners. In the early 1990s, there were ninety-eight ayurvedic colleges and seventeen unani colleges operating in both the governmental and nongovernmental sectors.

Another 2,000, owned and managed by charitable trusts, received partial support from the government, and the remaining 1,300 hospitals, many of which were relatively small facilities, were owned and managed by the private sector. The use of state-of-the-art medical equipment, often imported from Western countries, was primarily limited to urban centers in the early 1990s. A network of regional cancer diagnostic and treatment facilities was being established in the early 1990s in major hospitals that were part of government medical colleges. By 1992 twenty-two such centers were in operation. Most of the 1,300 private hospitals lacked sophisticated medical facilities, although in 1992 approximately 12 percent possessed state-of-the-art equipment for diagnosis and treatment of all major diseases, including cancer. The fast pace of development of the private medical sector and the burgeoning middle class in the 1990s have led to the emergence of the new concept in India of establishing hospitals and health care facilities on a for-profit basis.

By the late 1980s, there were approximately 128 medical colleges--roughly three times more than in 1950. These medical colleges in 1987 accepted a combined annual class of 14,166 students. Data for 1987 show that there were 320,000 registered medical practitioners and 219,300 registered nurses. Various studies have shown that in both urban and rural areas people preferred to pay and seek the more sophisticated services provided by private physicians rather than use free treatment at public health centers.