Health, Wellness and Tourism: healthy tourists, healthy business ...

no exception. Already, patients are travelling abroad for treatment such as coronary artery
bypass surgery (CABG) to countries such as India where it costs £3950 (Taj Medical Group,
2008) compared to an English cost of £1700 (Spire Healthcare, 2008). However, it is
uncertain whether this practice could prove beneficial for private healthcare insurance
companies who could potentially provide low-cost packages which included treatment being
outsourced.
It was deemed appropriate to consider hip and knee replacements being carried out both in the
UK and in India to ensure a broad demographic range was considered whilst looking at a
country that was already receiving patients from abroad for medical and surgical treatment.
The objectives of the project were divided into four categories: market determination,
financial savings, patient satisfaction (including cultural issues) and quality of care.
Due to the recent emergence of outsourcing in healthcare, limited published literature is
available, although some US based literature exists.
At present there are no UK insurers that outsource surgery abroad, although there are private
companies such as The Taj Medical Group who specifically focuses on sending UK patients
to India, providing fully inclusive packages and work in partnership with the Indian
Government to help regulate medical tourism, such as offering medical visa’s to patients, as
well as tax incentives to hospitals.
Deloitte found in their Survey of Health Care Consumers (2008) that nearly 40% of US
citizens would travel abroad for treatment, as long as the standard of care was comparable and
the cost was 50% of that in the US. However despite this, it was found that only 3% of
Americans have travelled for treatment. Horowitz and Rosensweig (2007) believe that the
number of Americans travelling for treatment is set to soar, predicting that by 2010 the
number will have increased from 750,000 to 6 million per year.
The Medical Tourism Association Survey conducted in August 2007, shows that India is by
far the cheapest country for the majority of surgical procedures listed. If the quality of care
and patient satisfaction were uncompromised, India would be the most cost effective country
to outsource to.
At present there are various internationally recognised accreditations for the standards of care,
such as the Joint Commission International (JCI) or the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO). Although there is a distinct lack of primary research on the subject,
the quality of care in India appears to be of equal or greater standard than that of the US. For
example, an elective CABG in California has a mortality rate of 2.91% compared to less than
1% for the same operation in Apollo hospitals in India (Milstein and Smith, 2007)
US literature cannot be solely used to predict the success of outsourcing treatment in the UK,
as the UK and US have vastly different health systems. Due to the National Health Service in
the UK, it is likely that far fewer people in the UK would be willing to pay for treatment
compared to people in the US. However, with the rise in medical tourism there is scope for
UK private health insurers to capture a new segment of the healthcare market.
Methodology
Spire and Bupa were selected as examples within the project as they are market leaders for
private healthcare provision in the UK however both Bupa and Spire felt unable to participate