This article below is based on an interview reported in the Thai language press in September 2007 with Dr. Suraphong Amphanwong, Health Service and Business Committee Chairman, Thailand Chamber of Commerce Association, and Foreign Activity Consultative Chairman, Private Hospital Association. (Translated by: Delphi Health Services)

Question: After a change in the government, Thai government support to help Thailand be the medical hub of Asia has considerably weakened and lost direction. Has development of medical services provided to foreign patients been a success in Thailand? Actually, attracting foreigners to have medical check-ups in Thailand started 10 years ago.  In the beginning, the first method was to persuade tourists to have a medical check-up in Thailand, and taking care of tourists who were sick or got in an accident during their traveling.  In the early years, this segment was small at only 3-5% of the total tourists.  Starting about 10 years ago, many Thai hospitals  began to ask themselves why foreign patients didn’t have medical treatment in Thailand.  The fact is, at that time, when a tourist was sick, he was taken to have medical treatment in another country.  I learned later that this was because insurance companies of those tourists and the tourists themselves didn’t fully trust in the efficiency of medical treatment of Thai hospitals.  As a result, 5-6 of the top private hospitals in Thailand decided to develop their medical treatment to be more efficient and to reduce potential risks, for example, by improving the quality of doctors; improving medical devices and medical technologies in order to support groups of foreign customers.  These improvement programs have led our hospitals to become more acceptable for foreigners. The former government saw the importance of this business to Thailand’s overall development and to growth in tourism.  Therefore, a policy for pushing Thailand to be the “Asian Medical Hub” by 2010 was prescribed and commenced.  The Ministry of Commerce, Department of Export Promotion (DEP) took the lead as the main organization in cooperating with the Thai Chamber of Commerce and other involved sectors, i.e., Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tourism Authority of Thailand, etc. to promote this project in foreign countries.  For example, these organizations continuously promoted Thailand’s medical services for foreigners in Trade Exhibitions held in foreign countries. Each year,  the number of foreign patients coming to for medical services in Thailand rose from 500,000 in 2001 to 1.28 million patients in 2005, and to 1.4 million patients estimated for last year.   This business makes the country  revenue of  Baht 23 billion in 2004, increasing to Baht 36 billion in 2006. Question: How many groups of foreign patients come to have medical services in Thailand? The highest amount of foreign patients comes from Japan because the Japanese have long come to work and live in Thailand.  The second group to the Japanese in terms of numbers is tourists from the Middle-Eastern countries such as tourists from Bahrain. Foreign patients can be divided into 5 groups: (1) tourists who became sick during traveling, (2) health tourists who come for a short simple beauty treatment, i.e., a laser treatment, a lasik eye surgery, together with a leisure stop of 3-5 days, (3) foreigners who work and live in Thailand, (4) people living in Thailand’s neighboring countries, and (5) foreign groups coming to have medical treatment by searching information from websites or marketing agencies of that hospital.    The last group is the most profitable for the hospitals as these patients tend to have longer stays.

Question: How about the extension of this business? In 2007 we have to accept that the market percentage growth of foreign health tourists in Thailand is decreasing although the total number should show an absolute increase.  It is decreasing because of factors such as, i.e., the effects of politics(government instability), the violent situations in the 3 frontier provinces in the south, and a general slowing down of the global economy.  These factors resulted in a decrease of foreign tourists, especially in the first six months of this year.  During 2005-2006, this business had a 12-13% market growth, but it is expected to be only a 10% increase for this year. Despite this decrease of market growth, private hospitals still focus on the oversea market to be a replacement for the the local market that is gradually decreasing.  Foreign patients have high financial capacity for various surgeries.  Thailand has an advantage on inexpensive cost (as illustrated  in the table below) by offering an international standard of medical services at very competitive prices.  Moreover, a long queue for medical service in Europe and the USA because of socialized medicines or other factors is a good opportunity for Thailand  to pull more foreign patients to be admitted at hospitals in Thailand and Asian countries.

Question: What will the extension and growth of medical services focus most on? Now, development of private hospitals businesses is focused not only on pulling foreigners to Thailand for health tourism, but also on building a reputation in foreign countries.  Hence, top private hospitals aim to expand their networks into overseas countries by being a joint venture partner in foreign countries and  administrators are even including the idea of selling a franchise for hospitals using local group names.  The extension of business up to this point has mostly gone to Middle-East countries as these countries have a high demand for medical development.  Meanwhile, second class private hospitals whose services are not proper enough to support the extension of networks to overseas marketing, have to improve their services to support foreign patients directly.  Because of the above developments, we see an employment of foreign interpreters and development of medical services of private hospitals in order to catch this target group. Question: What should the support of the government be for this sector? We can see that the extension of medical business including health tourism in Asia has been increasing continuously.  This causes a considerable competition in international markets.  Singapore, our important competitor, makes good promotions about this business because of the good cooperation of its government and local hospitals, while, Thailand still lacks consistent support from our authorities.  Development of the Medical Hub Project is almost ignored by the present government.  It may be seen that the project is not as important as others in spite of its involving many government organizations, i.e., Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Tourism  Sports, Tourism Authority of Thailand, Thailand Chamber of Commerce, Embassies, and Consular offices around the world.  If we cannot push forward this business, the advantages will go to our competitors. With efficiency of private hospital service  at present in Thailand and our relative success in this industry versus our competitors, the country will be much distinguished in this business if we are fully supported by the government.  Now, we still lack many of the supporting factors to cope with the extension of this business, for instance, qualified interpreters, doctors and other specialists.  This business may cause a shortage of doctors to take care of people in the country as the number of doctors move to the private sector and forsake government-run hospitals.  In the mean time, government organizations in foreign countries have seldom promoted this business. In conclusion, cooperation of every involved agency is required to attract more foreigners to have medical check-ups and treatment in Thailand and to further build for Thailand on the success that we have achieved to date in this field.

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