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

Health Issue Analysis
From the sample selected, the group that considered themselves to have current health issues
were generally willing to pay less for a health insurance premium than the healthy
participants, with a mean price of £47.36 in the healthy group, and £39.62 in the group with
health issues.
Health Insurance Analysis
The participants were grouped into those who had previous health insurance, and those who
have never had health insurance. Those with previous insurance appeared to be willing to pay
more for insurance at a mean value of £60.54, compared to £39.21 in those who have never
been insured.
When asked whether they would travel abroad for medical treatment in the future, those that
had previous insurance gave less positive responses, with 47% of responses either ‘probably’
or ‘definitely yes’, compared to 61% in those that had not previously been insured.
Financial savings
From the interview with the Finance Department at Apollo, it is clear that costs are reduced in
several areas which enable the hospital to charge patients on average of £4,000 (Taj Medical
Group, 2009) for a hip replacement compared to the £12,000 charged in the UK.
Apollo claim a price mark-up of treatment of 17-18%. The price mark-up at Apollo is
dependent on the category of room that a patient chooses. It is observed by Apollo that
international patients are those most likely to demand the higher categories of treatment
allowing for higher profit margins (greater than 20% mark-up).
A further explanation of the lower cost of treatment offered in India is accounted for by the
lower wages of professionals throughout India. The Apollo Finance Department claim that a
surgeon would be expected to charge 35-40,000 INR per operation which is equivalent to a
range of approximately £469 - £536. In the UK a surgeon would be expected to charge double
this.
The Apollo Finance Department state how they are able to obtain medicines at one tenth of
the cost of the UK for various different reasons. India’s ability to obtain medicines at such a
low cost is claimed to be due to their proximity to the countries of production and the fact that
they use ‘generic’ brands. In comparison, medicines are sold to the UK with a large profit
margin.
The interview with the Apollo Finance Department provided various details regarding the
equipment, hospital and staff costs. This has been analysed and tabulated in Table 1. The
approximations of actual costs for Spire has been tabulated in Table 2. Spire’s most recent
figures state that they charge patients between £9,680 and £15,230. Using an average price of
£12,455, with costs of £6,131, it is evident that the mark up of treatment is over 103%.