Healthcare
Healthcare business, you grapple with challenges, imperatives and trade-offs that are shaping the competitive dynamics of the industry:
For the last one decades, Innfobase has been working with payers, providers with them become more competitive.we are synthesizing our knowledge in healthcare and technology to offer new solutions. Our dedicated healthcare practice includes more professionals .
How can administrative costs and overheads be controlled while improving patient services and overall efficiency?
- How can spiraling IT costs be reined in so that resources are available for making new investments in technology to create competitive leadership capabilities?
- How can healthcare be made more consumer-centric without adding to delivery costs?
The Indian healthcare sector has been growing at a frenetic pace in the past few years. The windfall began ever since the developed world discovered that it could get quality service for less than half the price.
The sector is expected to post the highest year-on-year growth in earnings in the fiscal year to March 31, 2007, says Reuters. It is set to post a 42 per cent rise in earnings in the year to March 2007. These figures are driven by availability of quality healthcare and the huge rise in numbers visiting India for treatment.
The number of patients visiting India for medical treatment has risen from 10,000 in 2000 to about 100,000 in 2005. With an annual growth rate of 30 per cent, India is already inching closer to Singapore, an established Medicare hub that attracts 150,000 medical tourists a year.
The healthcare industry employs over four million people, making it one of the largest service sectors in the economy. A joint study by the Confederation of Indian Industry and McKinsey shows:
At the current pace of growth, medical tourism,currently pegged at US$ 350 million, has the potential to grow into a US$ 2 billion industry by 2012.
Healthcare spending in the country will double over the next 10 years. Private healthcare will form a large chunk of this spending, rising from R's 690 billion (US$ 14.8 billion) to R's 1,560 billion (US$ 33.6 billion) in 2012. This figure could rise by an additional R's 390 billion (US$ 8.4 billion) if health insurance cover is available to the rich and the middle class.
The voluntary health insurance market, which is estimated at R's 4 billion (US$ 86.3 million) currently, is growing fast. Industry estimates put the figure at R's 130 billion (US$ 2.8 billion) by 2005.
With the expected increase in the pharmaceutical market, the total healthcare market could rise from R's 1,030 billion (US$ 22.2 billion) currently (5.2 per cent of GDP) to R's 2,320 billion (US$ 50 billion)-R's 3,200 billion (US$ 69 billion) (6.2-8.5 per cent of GDP) by 2012.
However, it is not only the cost advantage that keeps the sector ticking. It has a high success rate and a growing credibility.
Indian specialists have performed over 500,000 major surgeries and over a million other surgical procedures including cardio-thoracic, neurological and cancer surgeries, with success rates at par with international standards.
Healthcare as an industry
The healthcare industry is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing industries .Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy. In 2003, health care costs paid to hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, diagnostic laboratories, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers and other components of the health care system, consumed 15.3 percent of the GDP of the United States, the largest of any country in the world. In 2001, for the OECD countries the average was 8.4 percent with the United States (13.9%), Switzerland (10.9%), and Germany (10.7%) being the top three.
The healthcare industry includes the delivery of health services by health care providers. Usually such services receive payment from the patient or from the patient's insurance company; although they may be government-financed (such as the National Health Service in the United Kingdom) or delivered by charities or volunteers, particularly in poorer countries.
There are many ways of providing healthcare in the modern world. The most common way is face-to-face delivery, where care provider and patient see each other 'in the flesh'. This is what occurs in general medicine in most countries. However, healthcare is not always face-to-face; with modern telecommunications technology, in absentia health care is becoming more common. This could be when practitioner and patient communicate over the phone, video conferencing, the internet, email, text messages, or any other form of non-face-to-face communication
