Description:
How has medical tourism grown over the years?
Reddy: It has grown...I wouldn't say substantially, but it's grown by 10%. Ten years ago, Apollo started focusing on patients outside India. It didn't happen as a result of marketing; it was more of a pull of customers towards good quality medicine, rather than our pushing them through advertising and marketing. The reason it happened was that all over Southeast Asia, people began to see a value proposition -- which was high value in terms of clinical outcomes and high-quality care -- at one-fifth of what they would traditionally pay in the U.S., and probably a third of what they would pay in a country like Singapore. As a result, we started attracting patients from all over Southeast Asia.
As it progressed, people began to realize that the India story, where health care was concerned, was improving dramatically. Just two years ago, we got the JCI [Joint Commission International] accreditation which puts us on par with hospitals in the rest of the world. We are now shoulder to shoulder with the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. And with that we started getting patients from the West as well. Most of them use the Internet as the medium through which they schedule their appointments and arrange consultations with doctors. But again, it's this value proposition that is really driving consumers. I would say that currently 10% of our total revenues come from medical tourism. That is not really a large amount, and it has grown by 2% to 3%.
There are obstacles in the way of what is happening. One is our airport facilities. If you look at the hospitals that are really doing well, they are connected to international airports that have around maybe 50 to 60 flights a day. Compare us with Thailand, which has 260 international flights flying into Bangkok every day -- that makes it very easy for patients to go to Bangkok for medical tourism. If you compare that with the Chennai Airport, where our largest hospital is, there are about 15 flights. So, I think that you have to look at the airport infrastructure.
Secondly, the case mix of most of the work that comes to India is tertiary care and acute care. It's not the plastic surgeries that you see in Bangkok. It's high-end orthopedic work, it's cardiology, and some of it is oncology. Patients come to us for really high-end work. To do that, because we are recognized for that sort of work, it is quite uncomfortable for patients to make this journey. We need to smoothen out that process -- so that our patients don't have to spend 12 to 14 hours in Immigration and Customs -- and we are working on that. We now have people to facilitate and assist these patients as they come across.
Finally, I would like to say that there is a huge opportunity here. If you look at the U.S. alone, there are 40 million people in the country who are not insured. If you look at the U.K., there are about 250,000 Asians who are in the waiting line at NHS [National Health Service]. Medical tourism is a huge market. I believe the way to address it is to create a package that will enable these people to use Indian facilities. We tried talking to governments and asking, "Why don't you send patients who have no treatment options to India?" Then again, we've spoken to benefits companies, etc. The only single hurdle facing the U.S. and foreign patients coming here is legal liability and the fact that they cannot address their concerns through a legal forum in the United States. They could, of course, use the Indian legal system, but it's become a way of life; people want the legal system to back them up in case there is a problem.
Now, the incidence of problems is not even 0.01% so far, because the success rates are very good and clinical outcomes are so good -- we are JCI accredited -- and patients have the same rights in India as they would in the U.S., so they are protected. But I think that it's just a hurdle that we need to overcome. Once we have done this, we will be tying up with insurance companies and benefits companies to see how we can assist people who need that type of health care. |
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