The Telangana government is contemplating an integrated medical tourism hub in Hyderabad on the lines of T-Hub in the field of information technology.
With about 10,000 international arrivals coming to Hyderabad a year for various medical purposes, it will be convenient to have an integrated facility centre where patients need not extend their hospital stay for the sake of post operative care, physiotherapy or special nutritional diet.
The hub will offer accommodation as well as the above services under one roof by coordinating with respective service providers at standardised rates. This will have an advantage of freeing the beds in hospitals for new patients in waiting and also help the patients who underwent treatment move out to a professionally run hub for recuperative care and bring down their hospital stay expenditure, sources said.
The Tourism Department will convene a preliminary meeting next month with government as well as corporate hospitals, hotels, services providers in medical diagnostics, physiotherapy, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, etc. The hub is proposed to be set up in the Sports Tower building in Gachibowli because of its strategic location - closer to international airport, corporate hospitals and other facilities. It will serve as a one stop centre for medical tourists right from taking care of their medical appointments and post medical treatment requirements and coordinate with all players in the medical tourism field, the sources explained.
Alternatively, hospital administrative staff or hotel front desks could also help the tourists in contacting the hub to meet their requirements once they are discharged from the hospital. If all things go well, the medical tourism hub will become operational in three to four months and it will be the first such centre in the country, the sources said. Apparently, such integrated medical tourism hubs are doing well in Costa Rica and Bangkok. Hyderabad with good hospitals and reputed doctors that attract NRIs, foreign nationals as the cost of many medical treatments and surgeries is about one-fifth of what it would cost abroad, official sources identified medical tourism as one potential sector that can be tapped seriously to yield spin off economic benefits to the State.
Each international medical tourist will come at least with one companion as attendant and may spend close to ₹10 lakh on travel, medical, sight seeing, local travel and shopping. “ Our target is to increase medical tourists to Telangana by about one lakh by 2025,” official sources said.
