Traveling Cure: India's New Coup In Outsourcing: Inpatient Care; Facing Expense, Long Waits At Home, Westerners Fly In; A Hospital Empire Grows; Mr. Salo Has 'Real Doubts'
MADRAS, India -- Last year, Terry Salo flew 22 hours from his home in Victoria, British Columbia, to this southern Indian port city for a partial hip replacement.</br></br>Mr. Salo, a former commercial fisherman, faced a wait of a year or more for free care from Canada's national health service but the pain had become unbearable. Before airfare and other expenses, he paid $4,500 for the surgery at Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd., a quarter of the cost for similar treatment in Europe and the U.S.</br></br>"People need to know that there are other options out there," says Mr. Salo, 54 years old, who was swinging golf clubs a month after the operation.</br></br>Mr. Salo is one of 60,000 foreign patients who were treated at Apollo Hospitals over the past three years. Since its start as a single hospital in 1983, Apollo has grown to 37 hospitals with more than 6,400 beds, making it one of the largest private hospital chains in Asia. Apollo's emergence as a global health-care provider in many ways tracks India's economic trajectory over the past three decades. The company has capitalized on the high cost of health-care administration in the U.S. and demands of patients elsewhere, for fast, inexpensive treatment.</br></br>Hundreds of Apollo's data processors work late-night shifts providing billing services and processing insurance claims for U.S. hospitals and insurers. Apollo laboratories perform clinical trials for Western drug companies, such as Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. Apollo even remotely evaluates X-rays and CAT scans.