Medical Tourism Essential for Bupa Cromwell Hospital

Half of the patients in the private Bupa Cromwell Hospital (London, United Kingdom) are medical tourists, and a major redevelopment will soon allow it to treat even more.

Bupa Cromwell Hospital, based in Kensington in West London, was purpose built and opened in 1981 as a state-of-the-art private facility for complex procedures. It currently has 128 beds, four VIP suites, and the only bullet-proof luxury suite in the UK. The pediatric center has a 14 bed ward with en suite bathrooms and an adjacent dedicated pediatric theatre, as well as a pediatric intensive care unit (pICU). The hospital has over 600 accredited consultants, mainly drawn from London's teaching hospitals, covering over 70 specialties, including cancer care, pediatrics, surgery, neurosciences, and diagnostics.

The ongoing multi-million pound Advance Redevelopment Program is designed to upgrade many areas of the hospital, including all patient rooms, and will focus on upgrading diagnostic and surgical equipment, including a Gamma Knife Perfexion, two TomoTherapy Hi-Art systems, a PET-CT, and a new cardiac catheter laboratory that offers high definition (HD) dynamic visualization. All patient rooms are also scheduled for refurbishment, and waiting areas and treatment rooms will also be upgraded.

During the Advance Program, the international patient center (IPC) will also be transformed, as almost half of the 2,000 patients visiting the hospital weekly are foreign medical tourists; of the remainder, 45% are foreign nationals, business people, or embassy personnel. The patients come from 144 different countries, of whom 56.5 % pay for themselves, 25% are embassy sponsored, and the rest hold private health insurance. Private health insurer Bupa (London, United Kingdom) bought the hospital in 2008.

Outpatient services include private GPs, health screening, and a walk-in family medicine and diagnostic center. Patient care extends beyond the medical to include high quality accommodation and hotel services, with a range of accommodation options to suit different needs and tastes, from individual, well-appointed rooms through to suites with companion rooms. The hospital has also recently set up a neurological rehabilitation service in collaboration with independent rehabilitation center Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital (Aylesbury, United Kingdom) for longer term rehabilitation.

The overall value of inbound medical tourism to the United Kingdom (including non-hospital based services, accommodation, and related spending) was around GBP 750 million in 2014. London’s private and national health service (NHS) hospitals made sales of around GBP 275 million from inbound medical tourists, defined as foreigners travelling to London explicitly for treatment.

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