Medical tourism in Karnataka: a review on comparative cost advantage

Medical tourism indicates provision of cost effective private medical care in collaboration with the tourism industry for patients needing surgical and other forms of specialised treatment. The main objectives of this paper are to review the trends of tourist arrivals to Karnataka in general and to analysis the status of medical tourism in Karnataka, comparative cost advantages and challenges. This paper is based on the information gathered through available secondary sources and literature reviews. It is found that the tourist flow in to the State has continuously increased from 3.67Crore in 2006 to 13.30 Core in 2016, which indicates comprehensive increase in arrivals. Karnataka has more than 15 major hospitals which attracts to international medical travel to the state. Some have speciality services like orthopaedics, oncology, or reproductive health, but most of them are multi-speciality hospitals. Hospitalisation cost in Karnataka both in the rural and urban areas is the lowest among the southern states according to the report prepared by the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI) under the Union Health Ministry in 2017.The major challenges to medical tourism in Karnataka is Information Dissemination, up gradation of existing infrastructure in hospital, Health worker shortages in some specialty areas