Singapore sees rise in medical tourism

Singapore has seen an average annual 20% increase in medical tourists from the Middle East since 2006, according to figures collated by Singapore Tourism Board (STB). Common procedures and treatments undertaken by the Middle Eastern visitors include live donor liver transplants, in-vitro fertilisation, heart procedures, stem cell transplantations and cancer treatments. Jason Ong of STB says,” Middle East populations are realising the benefits of travelling to Singapore for a wide range of medical procedures, which has resulted in year-on-year double-digit growth in the number of regional healthcare tourists. Middle East patients can be certain that they will receive the highest quality of treatment and follow-up care in Singapore, which has repeatedly shown to be on par with the best in the world. They can also be certain that their cultural and religious needs are attended to with Arabic-speaking service personnel, Halal food and even Arabic TV channels, during their hospital stay.”

Once selling on quality rather than price, with fierce competition vying for medical tourists’ money, prices in Singapore have been depressed to one of the region’s lowest. This competitive pricing strategy the health-care companies are quietly taking is the only way the government’s targets of million foreign patients annually could be met. Singapore is viewed favorably by medical tourists from South-East Asia and China due to the better quality of health-care service, and now low prices too.

Parkway is Singapore’s premier healthcare provider, and although it is now Southeast Asia’s largest private healthcare group and has ventured into India and China, Singapore itself is still Parkway’s key market. Parkway operates hospitals, specialist and general practitioner clinics, health screening and professional radiology and laboratory services in Singapore. The Mount Elizabeth, Gleneagles and East Shore hospitals have 1008 beds in total. Singaporeans make up the majority of the patients of these hospitals, but 35% of patients of Parkway’s Singapore hospitals are foreigners. Of this, about 65% are Indonesians, followed by Malaysians at 25%. Parkway Novena Hospital may open next year or by 2012.It is designed as a luxurious hospital and the first private hospital to offer only single beds. It will have 333 beds.

Fortis Healthcare chairman Malvinder Mohan Singh says his plan to use Singapore to build a pan-Asian healthcare empire remains unchanged though he lost a bid to take over hospital operator Parkway Holdings. The quality of medical education and the public health care system, which produces doctors, nurses and other talent for the industry, makes the city-state an ideal hub, “All of these capabilities are available in Singapore, and they are available to anybody who wishes to leverage on it. I want to be in a position to be able to leverage on those skill sets, capabilities and talent, and to build on them.”

The recent struggle between Fortis Healthcare and Khazanah Nasional for control of Parkway Holdings has thrown the spotlight on the local health-care industry, with new investors now looking at the potential.

Healthway Medical has a wide range of specialist clinics, making it the largest private medical service provider in Singapore in terms of clinic network with 4000 patients everyday, It is opening specialist clinics and screening centres, catering to the increasing number of people who are more health conscious – choosing prevention at an earlier stage through screening, rather than paying out more for a cure later on in life. Plans are underway to add six more clinics in China to its current two by end 2010, all of which are wholly owned and managed by the company. All eight Healthway China clinics will be in Shanghai, and are for expatriates as well as local Chinese. Viewing Shanghai as its strategic foothold into China, the company is set to expand into smaller cities nationwide. In Singapore, with over 100 clinics, it is increasingly targeting medical tourists.