Materia Medica Malaysiana

Health tourism hits a snag

The Health Ministry's plans to go big on health tourism has hit a snag as many private hospitals are dragging their feet on providing data on their foreign patients.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said here today only a few of the 31 hospitals targeted had submitted data on foreign patients, services provided, their duration of stay and revenue earned.
Such data is vital to help the ministry identify specific areas to promote health tourism.
"If we find many patients are coming from a particular country, we will focus our promotional efforts there."
Dr Chua had originally given selected private hospitals until the end of last year to submit their data.
Private hospitals that have not complied have been dropped from the ministry's list of hospitals participating in the medical tourism programme.
Health tourism has seen a 52 per cent year-on-year rise in revenue to RM54.5 million in 2003. It is expected to reach RM540 million by 2005 and go up to RM2.2 billion in 2010.
Dr Chua said the lack of response could be due to the fact that many of these hospitals were doing well and found no need to tap into the foreign market.