In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, MD and CEO, Fortis Healthcare, said that medical tourism is picking up. He highlighted that the number of international patients had reached 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels in December itself, however January and February remained subdued. In a month or two, he estimates the number to cross pre-COVID levels.
"Medical tourism is certainly picking up. You will be surprised that in the month of December itself, it had come to almost 70 percent of the pre-pandemic levels, which got depressed in the month of January and February. In March, we saw those numbers go up. My estimate is in another one or two months, we should see more than the pre-pandemic level of international patients coming to the country," he said.
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He shared that the Omicron wave impacted Q4 numbers in January, however normalisation in operations started happening in March. Raghuvanshi expects occupancy levels to remain normal.
"As far as the fourth quarter is concerned, the Omicron wave definitely impacted the numbers in the month of January. But that started recovering in the month of February and we saw complete normalisation by the month of March. So that trend continues in this month as well," he said.
"What we expect is that even if there was a rise in the number of cases, because otherwise the activities are not restricted and they are no restriction on movements, the occupancy levels should be the nearly normal," he added.
On the diagnostic space, he said that with digital penetration, the industry is undergoing some change. He mentioned that home collections have been rising when it comes to diagnostics. In this regard, he shared that Fortis is focusing on optimizing its lab network.
"The diagnostic business is undergoing some bit of change, and that is related to how digital penetration is increasing in the business. So as with other groups, we are also focusing on that channel. So the home collection bit has been increasing," he mentioned.
"The other effort which we have been making in SRL, is to optimize our lab network, which means we are increasing the touch points from where the samples could be collected, and the throughput of the labs could be increased. That increases the efficiency and sort of increases the depth as well," Raghuvanshi added.
Fortis Healthcare, Max Healthcare and Apollo Hospitals had landed under the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) radar for inflated prices of medicines and devices. The hospital chains are likely to face penalties if they fail to explain how they set rates for the medicines and medical devices as per CCI's order.
With respect to prices, he said, "The prices of consumables and medicines have always been under a regime or the charges levied by the hospitals are on MRP basis. So as far as this particular investigation of CCI is concerned, this was initiated in year 2015 and they had asked for information from procurement side on all our hospitals and how we price that."
"So that information was also provided and we continue to cooperate with them. They have not given a final report or verdict in the case, but what we believe is that we have been following the MRP regime. Post COVID, we have started charging even less than MRP in many cases, wherever the costs of medicines is high. So we don't see this as an issue," Raghuvanshi explained.
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On government payables, Raghuvanshi said, "Receivables from the government remain a challenge from time to time. But being government payments, we are sort of assured in a way that these payments would come, though they may get delayed."
Watch the video for the full interview.
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(Edited by : Dipikka Ghosh)
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