Reference no: EM13151759

The Wall Street Journal, Monday April 26, 2004. Global health care has arrived. During 2003, Canadian resident Terry Salo flew to India to have his hip replaced. He paid only a quarter of the cost of similar treatments in the U.S. and shaved a year off his waiting time for free care in Canada. The very satisfied Mr. Salo played golf a month later. Mr. Salo is not alone. Sixty thousand foreign patients flocked to India’s Apollo Hospitals to obtain cheaper and quicker medical care than was available in their home countries. Apollo, founded in 1983 as a single hospital, has grown into a 37-hospital chain with 6,400 beds and marketing offices in London and Dubai. Apollo’s overall private mission is to provide world class health care to India but also profit by substituting high end medical care to Western patients at a fraction of the cost. Apollo also conducts patient billing for U.S. firms and does clinical trials for large pharmaceuticals. Another area of company expertise is “medical tourism.” A patient can schedule a seaside resort vacation to convalesce from their surgery as soon as they are well enough to travel. The consulting firm McKinsey and Company expects this combination of medical care and tourism in India to approach $2 billion a year by 2012.