INDUSTRY PROFILE
Health care industry
The health care industry or health profession treats patients who are injured, sick, disabled, or infirm. The delivery of modern health care depends on an expanding interdisciplinary team of trained professionals.
For purposes of finance and management, the healthcare industry is typically divided into several groups and sectors. The Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark divide the industry into two main groups: (1) health care equipment & services and (2) pharmaceuticals, biotechnology & related life sciences. Health care equipment and services comprise companies that provide medical equipment, medical supplies, and health care, such as hospitals, home health care providers, and nursing homes. The second industry group comprises sectors companies that produce biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and miscellaneous scientific services.
Health care provider:
A health care provider or health professional is an organization or person who delivers proper health care in a systematic way professionally to any individual in need of health care services.
Today the health care industry is considered as one of the largest industries throughout the world. And this health care industry includes thousands and thousands of hospitals, institutions which will provide primary, secondary & tertiary level of care. To deliver this care, these health care industries require health care workers, and among these health care workers most of them will be nurses busy in providing care to each & every patient in all aspect. And it has been seen that, throughout the decades the health care workers i.e. nurses have manually adjusted hospital equipments and have provided care to the patients. Manually adjusting the hospital equipments and repetitive manual handling human loads is a physically challenging job and it often causes work related musculoskeletal disorders or other injuries.
DELIVERY OF SERVICES
The health care industry includes the delivery of health services by health care providers. Usually such services are paid for by the patient or by the patient's insurance company; although they may be government-financed (such as the National Health Service in the United Kingdom) or delivered by charities or volunteers, particularly in poorer countries. The structure of health care charges can also vary dramatically among countries. For instance, unlike the United States, Chinese hospital charges tend toward 50% for drugs, another major percentage for equipment, and a small percentage for health care professional fees.
There are many ways of providing health care in the modern world. The most common way is face-to-face delivery, where care provider and patient see each other 'in the flesh'. This is what occurs in general medicine in most countries. However, health care is not always face-to-face; with modern telecommunications technology, in absentia health care is becoming more common. This could be when practitioner and patient communicate over the phone, video conferencing, the internet, email, text messages, or any other form of non-face-to-face communication.
Medical tourism (also called medical travel, health tourism or global health care) is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care.
Such services typically include elective procedures as well as complex specialized surgeries such as joint replacement (knee/hip), cardiac surgery, dental surgery, and cosmetic surgeries. However, virtually every type of health care, including psychiatry, alternative treatments, convalescent care and even burial services are available. As a practical matter, providers and customers commonly use informal channels of communication-connection-contract, and in such cases this tends to mean less regulatory or legal oversight to assure quality and less formal recourse to reimbursement or redress, if needed.
Over 50 countries have identified medical tourism as a national industry. However, accreditation and other measures of quality vary widely across the globe, and there are risks and ethical issues that make this method of accessing medical care controversial. Also, some destinations may become hazardous or even dangerous for medical tourists to contemplate.
The health care industry is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing industries Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy. In 2003, health care costs paid to hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, diagnostic laboratories, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers and other components of the health care system, consumed 15.3 percent of the GDP of the United States, the largest of any country in the world. For United States, the health share of gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to hold steady in 2006 before resuming its historical upward trend, reaching 19.6 percent of GDP by 2016. In 2001, for the OECD countries the average was 8.4 percent with the United States (13.9%), Switzerland (10.9%), and Germany (10.7%) being the top three.
US health care expenditures totaled US$2.2 trillion in 2006. According to Health Affairs, USD$7,498 be spent on every woman, man and child in the United States in 2007, 20 percent of all spending. Costs are projected to increase to $12,782 by 2016.
China has implemented a long-term transformation of its health care industry, beginning in the 1980s. Over the first twenty-five years of this transformation, government contributions to health care expenditures have dropped from 36% to 15%, with the burden of managing this decrease falling largely on patients. Also over this period, a small proportion of state-owned hospitals have been privatized. As an incentive to privatization, foreign investment in hospitals — up to 70% ownership — has been encouraged
SECTOR STRUCTURE/MARKET SIZE
The Indian healthcare sector is expected to become a US$ 280 billion industry by 2020 with spending on health estimated to grow 14 per cent annually, according to a report by an industry body. "Healthcare has emerged as one of the most progressive and largest service sectors in India with an expected GDP spend of 8 per cent by 2012 from 5.5 per cent in 2009. It is believed to be the next big thing after IT and predicted to become a US$ 280 billion industry by 2020," the report said.
At present the sector is estimated to be around US$ 40 billion and will grow to US$ 78.6 billion by 2012.
As per a study by an industry body and Ernst & Young, India would require another 1.75 million beds by the end of 2025. The public sector however is likely to contribute only around 15-20 per cent of the required US$ 86 billion investment. The corporate India is therefore, leveraging on this business potential and various health care brands have started aggressive expansion in the country. Some of the companies that plan to increase their footprints include Anil Ambani’s Reliance Health, the Hindujas, Sahara Group, Emami, Apollo Tyres and the Panacea Group.
Sahara Group is planning several healthcare projects such as a 200-bed multi-specialty tertiary care hospital at Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, a 1,500-bed multi super-specialty, tertiary care hospital at Aamby Valley City and 30-bed multi-speciality secondary care hospitals across all the 217 Sahara City Homes Townships.
Meanwhile, Artemis Health Sciences (AHS), a health care venture of the Apollo Tyres Group, is also planning to establish four to eight multi-specialty hospitals in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana over the next three years.
The rural healthcare sector is also on an upsurge. The Rural Health Survey Report 2009, released by the Ministry of Health, stated that during the last five years rural health sector has been added with around 15,000 health sub-centres and 28,000 nurses and midwives. The report further stated that the number of primary health centres have increased by 84 per cent, taking the number to 20,107.
The size of the Indian medical technology industry may touch US$ 14 billion by 2020 from US$ 2.7 billion in 2008 on account of strong economic growth, higher public spending and private investments in healthcare, increased penetration of health insurance and emergence of new models of healthcare delivery, according to a report ‘Medical Technology in India: Enhancing Access to Healthcare through Innovation’ released by PwC and an industry body.
The facilities for health care in India have increased substantially from 1950s to 1980s. But, owing to population growth, the licensed medical practitioner’s numbers have fallen down. The primary health centers are the keystone of rural health care. In 1991, India had 22400 primary health centers, 27,400 dispensaries and 11, 200 hospitals. The health care system funnels tough cases into urban hospitals, but provides regular medical care in the countryside. The Primary health centers rely on paramedics to meet their needs. The problems regarding health care in India affecting primary health centers are curative and the predominance of clinical concerns that are intended on preventive work and reluctant staff to serve the rural areas. Besides, the family planning programs often are perceived as hostile to their preference of large families. The ministry of health as well as family welfare in 1989 had 10157 civilian hospitals in all the state as well as union territories. In 1991, 811000 hospitals and facilities beds were recorded. The health care in India has distributed the hospital based on the local socioeconomic conditions. Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state, had 735 hospitals in 1990 with a 139 million population and Kerala in 1991 had a 29 million population had 2053 hospitals Top Hospitals in India: · Apollo Hospital Ahmedabad · Lilavati Hospital and Research Center · AIIMS Hospital Delhi · Batra Hospital Delhi · The Bangalore Hospital · Vijaya Hospital Chennai · Care Hospitals Hyderabad · P.D Hinduja National Hospital · Samved Orthopedic Institute | |
The uneven distribution of hospitals definitely needs reexamination. The number of hospitals was conservative in 1990s than the official data. The hospitals are managed by the government and there are many operated by charitable trusts and others are private hospitals. The health care in India is a matter of concern because the imported medical equipments reached the urban centers primarily and the network of cancer diagnostic was established in 1990s in some of the government medical colleges. Most of the private hospitals were deprived of sophisticated medical facilities.The private medical sector and the escalating middle class have caused the emergence of establishing hospitals as well as health care in India on profit basis. The medical colleges have also increased now and the medical practitioners and registered nurses. However traditional practitioners pursue their practice in the name of ayurveda dealing with herbal medicines. | |
Health care industry trends manifest an upward growth but several areas need to be attended to for enhancing health care services for the common man.
Different countries like Indonesia, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, India, Turkey and China comprise approximately 1/5th of the worldwide health care sales. Health care industry trends also suggest that the medical related conditions in the developing countries which are chronic in nature, will be similar to the ones existing in the developed countries. In order to meet international standards, the existing health care industry is required to alter the mode of operation for generation of higher revenue and greater contribution to the Gross Domestic Product of the country.
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