Medical Tourism OR One More Outsourcing??

The views expressed in this article are purely mine & any resemblance to any other views expressed any where else is purely coincidental.

The word ‘Outsourcing’ has been one of the most (ab) used word through out the world in the last 5 years or so….it has been one of the most common & recycled topics of discussion, be it in some of the talk shows on TV or be it in some of the panel discussions / group discussions for B-school or job interviews. In fact, I had to face the same topic in my first job interview during the Group Discussion stage, fortunately, being a regular reader of current affairs , I was able to talk something on outsourcing that made some sense to the panelist & I got the job.

Today, in retrospect when I look back & try to think as to why outsourcing made so much business news & in a way created a divide between the countries where people were losing their jobs & the countries where all their jobs were outsourced. In fact, John Kerry made outsourcing as one of his prime selling points in the presidential polls against George Bush. Companies today are outsourcing activities that they believe is not within the domain of their core competence & to an extent non-value adding for its employees & shareholders. The outsourcing activities that are most commonly heard of are pertaining to recruitment , salary processing, inventory management or broadly speaking Vendor management services, maintenance, CRM & many other activities that are being outsourced even at the time of writing this article.

The one form of outsourcing that really fascinated me is ‘Medical Tourism’ which is gaining popularity across the globe & India is again vying to be one of the hot locales for this outsourcing activity which is also becoming an important source of revenue for the players in this industry. Medical Tourism involves the health care industry, where in the patient suffering from a particular disease can take a package tour & spend quality time in a place that is far away from his place, in the surroundings that will be most beneficial for the patient’s quick recovery under the watchful eyes of high caliber medical staff, it surely comes at a premium price. In India , the southern states of Tamil Nadu , Karnataka & Kerala have always been preferred destinations for most of the Indians with respect to medical care , now many foreigners are exploring the medical tourism route which serves two basic purposes ; quality medical care & costs that are a few times cheaper that in the countries of the western world.

India is surely becoming one of the fore runners in the Outsourcing business which in turn is definitely helping to generate employment opportunities & increase the disposable income of the Indian populace at large, but I think there is one class of activity that we might think of outsourcing to some other country - our political & social administration for the same twin reasons….its not our core competence & the main stakeholders i.e. we the people do not find any value addition happening in our daily lives in the current scenario , or… have we already outsourced the Prime Minister’s job ???

Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility !!!

Disclaimer - The views expressed in the article below are purely mine & any similarity with anyone else's views are purely co-incidental.

My last posting on my blog page was more than 100 days back...there is no specific reason for this hibernation...I guess it was due to the theory of diminishing marginal utility....when I started off , I used to post at least one article every week but then started losing interest partly because of the fact that there was nothing much happening around me that was worth writing & partly because of the fact that I was looking out for a job change that took most of my reserve time that I tried to store for some creative activities like writing. But, after such a long gap, there are zillion things that I have got to write , comment & criticize on.....to start with, I have left my previous job & joined another reputed company on a better job profile & seemingly better Vitamin- M, am still in Chennai though. Couple of my friends got married to their respective love interests in their hometowns,couldnt visit either of the weddings as they were far flung from Chennai.

The last one month kept me glued to the TV sets watching the build up to the FIFA world cup football & have tried to watch almost every match right from the league stages, I believe the world should sit up & appreciate India in the manner in which its citizens worship this event in spite of the fact that most of us know that India may not even come close to qualifying for the World Cup ever in our lifetime. Also, something interesting that happened in the context of Indian sports during the last one month was that most of the Indian sport lovers were interested in calculating the permutations & combinations as to who qualifies for the last 16 in the football world cup instead of spending time as to what strategy should India adapt to win (rather not lose) the Test series in the West Indies.

Also, I think this year’s FIFA world cup was brilliantly marketed, be it in terms of media coverage or be it exposing us to some of the niche industries in Germany (prostitution has been widely marketed – the sex workers are regular tax payers in Germany) , also the websites, newspapers & television channels have managed to clinch the hottest pictures on display….. the pictures have got nothing to do with the players or goals scored….trust me!!!

I have always tried to limit the lengths of my blog postings, so chances are that I may have missed out on some of the other happening events that took place around me….some of them also involving me… the idea of this posting was to get back to the habit of writing & will surely be back with events that have made me stop & think & of course will put them into words….