Cross-border Healthcare Access in South Asian Countries: Learnings for Sustainable Healthcare Tourism in India

Since the 19th century affluent patients from less developed parts of the world travelled to major European Medical Centres and United States for treatment unavailable in their own countries and for cutting - edge healthcare facilities. From the early 1990's there has been a reverse flow of patients from highly developed nations to less developed countries circumventing the health care services offered in their own land, where they are inaccessible, undesirable, with overburdened public health systems and long waiting periods. In the past decade the global healthcare market has grown exponentially in the South East Asian countries whereby patients accessing health care services beyond their borders are more than 5 million. This cross border access to health care is reaching proportions of US $ 40 billion with an annual growth rate of 20 percent where South Asian countries like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and India are at the forefront primarily due to availability of manpower both skilled and unskilled, lower healthcare infrastructure and treatment costs. This paper entails the study of Singapore, Thailand and India reflecting the best practices in these countries in terms of stakeholders’ perspective associated with international health tourism.