Scientific Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics -
Miscellaneous, grade: none, NIL, course: Business management, language:
English, abstract: India's growth story as a medical tourism hub is a
relatively newer one. With significant cost advantages, availability of
quality medical treatment with the most-advanced medical technology
coupled with India's well-known tourist destinations and rich cultural
heritage, medical tourism does provide a motive sufficient enough to
allure those foreign patients who either want to avoid the long waiting
list for medical treatment in the West or, in absence of any health
insurance coverage, seek lower cost treatment. India's strength in
advanced and life saving healthcare such as organ transplants,
cardio-vascular surgery, etc, as well as in alternative systems of
medicine(i.e. ayurveda, naturopathy, etc) offer significant competitive
advantages. Cashing in this opportunity, The National Health Policy 2002
declared that treatment of foreign patients is legally an "export" and
deemed "eligible for all fiscal incentives extended to export earnings".
Besides, a new category of visa, "Medical Visa" has been introduced by
Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India. On the other hand, setting up
of Bio-Technology Parks Society of India, grant of SEZ status to them,
coming up Medicities, entry of private players in health insurance in
India along with Indian hospitals looking for international
accreditation glitter further hopes of accelerated medical tourism, a
growth engine for foreign exchange earnings. However, the poor
infrastructure of the country, shabby streets, pity state of our public
hospitals shakens our confidence, despairs for this much hype of medical
tourism and calls for serious attention wherein much more efforts are
needed. Definitely, public-private partnership is one way ahead which
can revamp public hospitals and bring them at par with other private
hospitals.Further, there is still no Medical Touri
