Global Healthcare Sector: The Global Health Care Industry

Global Healthcare Sector

Overview

The global health care industry is going through a period of “Glocalization”

Healthcare concerns are global, though they are usually delivered locally. And while the effects of these issues are influenced by local factors, many challenges are shared around the world, as are the opportunities to innovate to solve them.

Total global health spending is expected to double in the coming 4 years

Growth will place enormous pressure on governments, health care delivery systems, insurers, and consumers in both developed and emerging markets to deal with issues, such as,

High costs leading to more government spending

Aging population

Growing occurrence of chronic diseases

Uneven distribution and quality of care

Unfair

Liver transplant which costs $300,000 in the US, costs about $91,000 in Taiwan.

Medical tourism has large growth outlooks, however, perceptions of medical tourism are not always positive.

The worldwide medical tourism market is growing at a rate of 20%-30% a year. An estimated 750,000 Americans went abroad for health care in 2007, in 2012, 1.6 million, and is expected to rise, costing health care providers billions of dollars in lost revenue.

In places with high standards of quality, medical tourism is viewed as risky. In some parts of the world, as in Lebanon, political issues can sway where medical tourists will choose to seek out health care, in others, such as India, prevalence of airborne viruses, and bacterial infections have a greater influence.

Consequently, health tourism providers have developed as intermediaries to unite potential medical tourists with hospitals and other organizations, tailored to consumer needs.

Types Of Hospital Care

Primary care: Involves the widest scope of health care, acting as a first line of consultation for all patients within the health care system. Practitioners must possess a wide range of knowledge in many areas, and must direct the patient to other specialist care that they may need. These doctors are usually general practitioners or family

Deals with levels of medicine which are highly specialized and not widely accessed, such as experimental medicine.

GCC Healthcare Sector

Overview

Like most developed countries, the GCC region has been accompanied by a large demand in healthcare, driven by large inflows of expats, rising incomes, and inactive lifestyles.

Further intensifying demand was the high insurance premiums provided, as well as increasing insurance penetration witnessed in the recent years, leading to greater usage of healthcare facilities, which led to over consumption as out of pocket costs are low.

This, coupled with rising medical costs from the introduction of new medical technologies, overuse of care resulting from physicians recommending too many services, and higher length of hospital stay, are pushing countries to gradually move away from a welfare state healthcare model to a market-based model.

Large plans to expand the healthcare sector in the GCC are underway, such investments require strong Public-Private Partnerships and private sector presence to achieve overall goal of improving access and