London has long held
a reputation as a leading city in many sectors, including finance, fashion,
arts and technology. Its international reputation, as well as its importance as
a global hub for trade and services, has put London on par with global cities
such as New York and Tokyo. Many critics have said this overabundance of
industry has made London unbalanced in terms of population and expenditure,
especially when compared to other parts of the UK.
London’s global
dominance is set to grow even further and it establishes itself a global
destination for healthcare. This is in part due to the recent wave of private
healthcare facilities and services soon to be based in London. Businesses from
diverse locations such as Ohio and Abu Dhabi have been given the go ahead to
create private hospitals in the capital. Competing against these foreign
entries to the UK healthcare market is Britain’s own Spire Healthcare, who are currently seeking a site for their own
competing private healthcare facility, set to open in 2018.
Whilst many people
have previously come to the UK in an attempt to get free healthcare from the
NHS (a practice known as health tourism), this new spate of private healthcare
facilities could lead to a new kind of health tourism. This could see wealthy
international visitors in London being able to afford and choose from a large
selection private facilities, many of which they wouldn’t have access to back
home.
An analysis of
London’s healthcare market see’s growth driven by a number of factors, most
notably high-paying private clients seeking world class treatment, with enough
money to travel overseas and visit the best facilities. In particular, visitors
from the Middle East have been tipped as the biggest spenders who have driven
growth in UK private healthcare. London has long profited from the influx of
wealthy Middle Eastern visitors, although healthcare has never been a primarily
large draw until now.
London itself is also
well positioned to attain this global healthcare gold-standard. The city has
excellent links and resources to make a high quality private hospital possible
in more than one affluent area. In terms of planning and 3pl healthcare logistics from
the perspective of a healthcare business, London is perfectly situated and easy
to supply.
The UK’s growing
digital economy is driven partly by London’s size and sheer number of
digital-based businesses. A growing part of these businesses are based in the
healthcare sector, providing useful applications and services such as Pager, a mobile app that arranges private medical home
visits, or a similar app from Heal which also measures
medicine intake and reference. Pager has already secured a $24 million
investment in its early development, showing the market for these high-end
healthcare products exists.
Despite these
advancements, there is still a growing need for more advanced technologies in
healthcare, which these private facilities can afford and provide. These are
mainly in the fields of oncology and neurology. Private healthcare, often open
to outside funding and investment, is able to provide complex procedures in
these fields and therefore secure higher paying patients with
less-straightforward afflictions.
The growing reputation
of London as a leading healthcare hub has also resulted in smaller facilities
dotted around the capital. The basement of The Shard, for instance, is home to small clinic
which specialises in MRI scans; it also houses 78 consulting rooms, 12
treatment rooms, and a state of the art rehabilitation gym.
Whilst larger private
facilities in the capital are still in development, these smaller facilities
have been drawing in the same demographic which would typically be looking for
world class healthcare in London. Overall, London based private hospitals as
well as private NHS units, are currently worth around £1.5 billion and have
been growing at a rate of 8% year-on-year since 2006. Private medical insurance
providers currently account for 57% of this £1.5 billion, whilst self-pay is
19%, overseas patients 23% and private NHS firms at just 1%.
A variety of private
facilities will be important to maintain a healthy competition in the UK, but
also to ensure overseas visitors are paying an appropriate price for treatment.
It may seem easy to overlook this fact because they have the money to spend,
but like any market, it must be regulated to ensure domestic and international
patients are not being taken advantage of.
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