Medical tourists, who visit India for surgeries that would cost them a bomb abroad, aren’t just doing the healthcare industry a favour – they’re making a great case for shorter hospital stays, unlike most Indians who get admitted to hospitals. Compared to Indian patients who prefer longer post-operative hospital stays, foreign patients are happier to get discharged in a day or two and come in for a few check-ups later. “They (foreign patients) really prefer going back to the hotels a day after spinal surgery, now that it’s minimally invasive,” explains Dr Sajan Hegde, Apollo’s Chief Spine Surgeon and a pioneer with robot-guided spine surgery.
In contrast, most Indian patients prefer to have slightly longer stays, even asking to remain and recuperate in hospitals for up to 12 days, “Some patients do ask us if they can stay admitted, but we prefer to discharge them in 4-5 days if they’re doing well,” he adds.
Take this case for instance. It’s been a little over ten days since Eric Millican touched down in Chennai. Being diagnosed with progressive paralysis in the limbs wasn’t easy for the 65-year-old Californian, nor was it an easy choice to opt to fly all the way to India’s Apollo Hospitals to get the spinal surgery done. “I landed at 3 am and by noon the next day all the tests were done and before I knew it I was under anasthesia,” he laughs. That was on May 25. Barely two days later, he was back in his hotel wondering what the local surfing scene was like.
Similarly, Apollo’s robotic spinal surgery unit – one of world’s best having completed 100 surgeries in 6 months – has worked on three other foreigners with various spinal issues in the last 15 days; all of them were up and out of the hospital a few days after.
Ambulatory (or same-day surgeries) have been a norm in American hospitals for over two decades now and have slowly begun to make inroads in Indian corporate healthcare. “Not many people will be open to the idea of getting spine surgery in the morning and heading home in the evening,” says Dr Hegde, “But people are opening up to it now and we expect it to catch on,” he adds. While the medical costs are a fraction of what it is in the US or Europe, people leave hospitals to save on high costs – but go to recovery homes which are relatively inexpensive.
While Apollo’s DayCare surgery has been handling multispecialty ‘elective’ surgeries for a year, Nova Specialty Surgery – a chain that thrives on short-stay surgeries has opened up a sea-side centre in Chennai, very recently. Orthopaedician Dr Nandkumar Sundaram had said that the potential for elective surgeries (from ortho and neuro to ENT and gastro) in a city like Chennai was “vast” and was just waiting to be tapped.
