Over the years, in many developed countries, public and private health care systems have started to strain and the cost of treatment and health insurance have mounted considerably which forced patients to explore cost-effective health care systems abroad. This cross-border/within the country travel for better, cost effective and easily accessible health care is termed as medical tourism. Health/medical care providers, especially in developing countries, identified the opportunities of this emerging niche market and swiftly promoted quality health care at affordable cost with easy access to treatments/ procedures which are otherwise unavailable for patients in their home countries. Inbound medical tourism is the health-related personal overseas journey undertaken by patients primarily for their medical related reasons coupled with leisure at the treatment destination. Patients across the world currently have adequate information about overseas health/medical care and prefer health care alternatives outside their national medical system. Medical tourism is an inclusive term which captures an array of activities ranging from travelling to another country with the purpose of obtaining health care like procedures, dental treatment, reproductive treatment, organ transplantation and medical check-ups. This is likely to remain as long as variances in health care delivery services and cost differences for medical treatments exist in various countries. Inbound medical tourist arrivals to India are moderately less when compared to other key players in this region. This research paper studies the influencing issues, emerging trends and future prospects of inbound medical tourism in India. This paper concludes with propositions to devise an effective and effective stratagem to position India as one of the most preferred medical tourism destinations in the world.

cross border travel, medical infrastructure, hospital accreditation, quality patient care, swift access to treatment, cost effectiveness, medical pluralism