Singapore’s loss is Indonesia’s gain: local hospitals benefit from medical tourism as borders stay shut

Some 1.2 million Indonesians travel to neighbouring countries, including Singapore and Malaysia, every year for health check-ups

The pandemic has given Indonesian hospitals a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ to prove their quality of care, an analyst says

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IHH Healthcare’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. File photo: Bloomberg

Published: 9:00am, 1 May 2021Updated: 9:00am, 1 May 2021

As Indonesia’s borders stay shut for a year and counting, people who used to travel overseas for medical treatment are turning to local hospitals.

“More cancer patients are showing up at the hospital that I went to,” said Edyth Chatrina, a lawyer who took her 76-year-old mother for lung cancer treatment at a Jakarta clinic run by PT Siloam International Hospitals. “Nearly all of them were being treated in Singapore before the pandemic.”

Some 1.2 million Indonesians travel to neighbouring countries every year for health check-ups and other medical services, according to Matt Zafra, Principal and Head of Asia Pacific Health and Life Sciences at consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

They collectively spend US$2 billion annually on treatments and account for more than half of medical tourists in Malaysia and Singapore, Zafra wrote in an email.

While foreign patient visits for IHH Healthcare Bhd, which runs Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore and Gleneagles Hospital in Malaysia, declined during the pandemic, Siloam is expecting a record 25 per cent margin for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in 2021.