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Even as insecurity continues for thousands of Indian doctors with career plans abroad, the medical fraternity back home has a reason to smile.
In what could be the next big step in the outsourcing business, big corporates in the US are planning to offshore their employee healthcare to India.
An example cited about Wal-Mart, which spends a staggering $8,000 on each employees healthcare every year, and they have around a million of employees who are entitled to such benefits takes the total expenditure to a staggering $8 billion. And that means if Wal-Mart could save 90 percent of that amount by offshoring will not that help them better their coffers.
As health insurance gets painfully expensive in the US, huge cost advantages of medical procedures in countries like India are proving to be irresistible for companies there including those on the Fortune 500 list.
Mercer Health & Benefits Dr Arnold Milstein said, "that they estimate that the price advantage for the most efficient Indian hospitals would be around 85 per cent to 90 per cent."
American companies are obviously feeling the pressure. Many believe that unless they control the escalating health expenditure their profits could start taking a serious hit by the year 2008.
A study suggests that outsourcing of health care can easily reduce the showroom price of a GM car by a thousand dollars - its all very simple logic so there should not be any problem.
In west the Outsourcing of business processes itself has its own share of controversy. Now this new issue of Healthcare Outsourcing will also not be welcomed easily as this requires a degree of intimacy with the patient, and the issue can be a tricky.
As US still recovers from the shock of its inability to provide efficient healthcare to its people, India on the other hand awaits them with open arms.
Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre Director Dr Naresh Trehan, Executive said, "We have patients coming from there on a regular basis so far mainly those who are uninsured if you say the trend, I think its three times today than what it was two years ago."
Medical tourists coming to India may not be a new happening but so far most of those have been without sufficient insurance cover. Considering that just around 15 per cent of the Americans are uninsured, there is room for a lot more business for our health care industry - but the big question is are we prepared for this change?
Dr Naresh Trehan says, "The number of people who are coming and the pace at which it is developing I dont think its going to overrun our systems. A lot of new capacity is coming on line.
According to current drift, Indias health care industry is going to be $47-billion- strong in another 5 years and if American companies decide to play this issue down, that figure could easily double in the years to come.
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