As Europe heads deep into the slump, private healthcare will not escape unscathed. The way forward is for businesses to set up holistic clinics, focused on a particular condition, which deliver high quality, low cost care to patients. To work, these have to be based upon close alliances with insurers and medtech suppliers.
Look, for instance, at the Stockholm and Malmo Spine Centers, owned by quoted private healthcare outfit Global Health Partners, run by ex-Capio boss Per Batelsman. Chronic back pain is massively expensive for insurers (and patients), and the Spine Centers offer pioneering back surgery, based on the latest orthopaedic implants.
But the spine clinics also offer physiotherapy, and even psychotherapy, on the grounds that some back pain is psychological. Such holistic centres are spreading fast. Depuy, which makes spinal implants, tell us that there are no fewer than 20 such spine clinics in Germany. Insurers know that, with the rapid rise in obesity, back pain is likely to become a massive liability.
Holistic clinics are also likely to be the way forward in Eastern Europe. In Romania, 3TS-backed Clinica Medico Unirea, and rival Sanador, both want to launch such specialist centres. How much better and more effective than attempting to open an expensive private hospital!
Take a fairly common condition, build a holistic clinic around it, and you can quickly build a national centre of excellence that wealthy Romanians will turn to, rather than jetting off to Tel Aviv, Budapest or Vienna.
From a marketing perspective, holistic clinics make huge sense, as patients increasingly Google their condition. Offering a wide range of treatments confers instant credibility, and offering alternative treatments works well with the anxious, who are always eager to shy away from surgery if there is an alternative. Such sites also lead to meaty, search engine-rich content, which should win organic search contests!
There is nothing particularly new in any of this, but success is about focus. Too many private healthcare operators still need to move away from perceiving themselves as hotels where private doctors treat their patients - the holistic clinic provides a good, strong way forward.
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