Medical tourism space witness increased hiring activities

Updated on: Tuesday, October 18, 2011

India's emergence as a major medical tourism hub is driving large scale hiring activities in this space and the number of job additions has nearly tripled in past one year, say experts.

In the first half of the current fiscal, various medical tourism related segments have seen addition of more than 1,000 jobs, which is nearly thrice the figure for the same period last year. A similar trend could also result in more than 2,000 being further hired in the second part of the year ending March, 2012.

The improving quality of healthcare facilities in the country is expected to help Indian medical tourism industry to attain a size of USD 2.4 billion by 2012. "Since mid of last year we had seen sudden increase in hiring activity in the medical tourism segment. After that we had never seen any declining trend till now," MyHiringClub CEO Rajesh Kumar said.

"The medical services include doctors, hospitals, various other specialists, laboratories, medical stores and blood banks. The persons to be utilised in medical tourism fields are range from MBBS, MBA, pharmacist, medical transcript experts, medical lawyers, cyber lawyers, IT persons, etc," Tina Sharan, MD at Trip4U Team, a one-stop travel solution, said.

"We are doing robust hiring this year compared to the last few years for various medical persons and engage various service providers in this field for last one year," Sharan added. According to a report by MyHiringClub, hiring in the medical tourism space stood at 1,049 in the first two quarters of current fiscal 2011-12 compared to 348 in the in the year-ago period indicating no signs of losing steam even as the global economy wobbles.

In addition, 305 and 478 people were being recruited in the third and fourth quarter of 2010-11, respectively. "Day by day medical tourism market is growing rapidly and we are also increasing our number of staff as per requirement to give quality of services and care to our patients. This year our hiring activity is upward compare to last year," Chairman and CMD at Medanta-The Medicity, Naresh Trehan said.

Experts believe that one of the primary reasons for the growth in medical tourism is that availability of low-cost medical facilities. "The reason is that there is significant movement in quality of care and treatment in the last 10 year in India. Quality, care and cost are major reason to attraction of medical tourism in India.

India has always been a destination for South Asians. The quality of treatment is almost better or equal to the US or Europe," Trehan added. "Most estimates claim treatment costs in India start at around a tenth of the price of comparable treatment in America or Britain.

"The most popular treatments sought in India by medical tourists are alternative medicine, bone-marrow transplant, cardiac bypass, eye surgery and hip replacement. That's the reason for boom in this industry segment," Kumar said,

The maximum number of patients come from South Asia, the Middle-East, Africa and CIS countries. Besides, patients from America and Europe are also coming but at lesser pace. The medical tourism has a great future in the country as the Indian government is also taking various steps to address infrastructure issues that hinder the growth in this space.

Looking ahead, Kailash Saini, Director of Success Mantra Management said, "Sectors like medical tourism is hiring professionals pretty well. We expect to see opening of more positions in the coming quarters".

Medical tourism space witness increased hiring activities

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