Under a new ‘heal in India’ campaign, the Union government wants to promote India’s medical facilities and infrastructure, with plans to standardise processes and treatment packages for foreign nationals.
Officials said the initiative aims to reframe the industry to avoid the negative connotations that come with the term medical tourism.
“When it comes to medical treatment, tourism doesn’t seem right, which is why there have been discussions about branding the process as ‘heal in India,’ where we provide health care delivery services to patients from outside India in a far more streamlined manner,” said an anonymous government official familiar with the situation.
Checks on pricing could also be part of the process. “The goal of package standardisation is to ensure that patients who are on a medical visa for treatment are not overcharged.” Different hospitals currently quote different rates or monetary packages for nearly identical procedures or treatments, which is not fair to the patient. “The idea is to standardise it so that there isn’t a lot of variation,” the official quoted above explained.
International patients will have access to a certified grievance redressal mechanism, according to the government.
“There need to be a system in place where these patients can register their complaints as the country is new for most of them and they would not know where to go if they faced any issues during their stay,” said the official.
India is one of the most popular destinations for international patients, owing to a large number of doctors trained in developed countries, fluency in English, and access to cutting-edge diagnostic equipment, among other factors.
Patients from all over the world come for cancer treatment, organ transplant surgeries, and plastic surgery, among other procedures.
In addition, the government is planning a parallel campaign called ‘heal by India,’ which will look to provide manpower from India in the health-care sector in response to needs in other countries.
“Heal by India initiative is meant to generate job opportunities abroad for our trained professionals in the sector, especially those in the allied health care sector that has huge demand outside India. There are about 56 professional allied health care segments that includes x-ray operator, other technicians, physiotherapist etc, for which there is huge demand,” said the official cited above.
“The idea is to provide trained human resource to heal the world based on their requirement. There is huge demand for psychiatrists/psychologists in a country like the USA. Japan needs nurses from us, and two colleges have been identified in the northeast where Japanese language instructors are teaching nurses the language so that they don’t face language barrier there,” added the official.
According to sources familiar with the situation, India is planning to open offices in various countries to help with the skill development mission. A member of the Niti Aayog is overseeing the development of the framework.
The development came as a result of discussions held earlier this month with various stakeholders at the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s two-day chintan shivir.
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