Fitness first

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Between 2005 and 2006, Dubai welcomed 292,000 new residents, sending the population soaring from 1,300,000 to 1,422,000. The figures are testament to the Emirate's celebrated economic growth, but they are also a clear symptom of the strain the government's healthcare system is under. For each visa application or renewal, individuals must undergo a medical, to date handled by public sector hospitals. Processing 800 mandatory medical fitness tests a day has proved untenable for the government and, in a move that hints at future health policy, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has now opened the testing system to the private sector.

For Dr Mohanakrishnan of Eurohealth Group, a Dubai-based healthcare consultancy firm, the announcement lays down the gauntlet to the sector. The success or failure of the initiative will be vital for future public-private ventures, he argues.

"This is a challenge to the private healthcare providers to rise up to the expectations of the international community of Dubai.

It may be a challenge, but it is also a golden opportunity for private facilities to turn a simple profit from Dubai's population boom.

Up to the challenge?

The importance of clinical accuracy when testing for communicable diseases is obvious, and the move suggests a greater trust of Dubai's private clinics. To qualify for a licence, private hospitals will have to be internationally accredited, as will diagnostic centres and independent medical laboratories. Private facilities are currently able to perform visa renewal fitness tests, and the tests have proved a boon to the sector, reports Dr Jamil Ahmed of the Prime Healthcare Group: "We have been doing the residency visa renewals for a year and we have already seen 20,000 people.

Prime has three locations across Dubai and has invested in technology capable of administering 160 samples per hour. The group has the means to process 600 samples per day, but Ahmed estimates it will initially settle for less than half of its maximum capability. "We are currently processing about 80 samples per day and I think we will do about 250 a day, no more than that," he explains.

Corporate care

In the short term, accredited practices are set to benefit from the sheer volume of customers exposed to their organisation. Sameer Saheed is operations and marketing manager for Belhoul European Hospital. Partly due to its current situation as a first floor facility, the hospital will not be eligible for the testing licence, but Saheed estimates that for qualified facilities, the returns will be substantial.

"It will be a really big market...the volumes will definitely be huge as the number of people who come into Dubai everyday is crazy," he said.

While the news will provide medical facilities with ready-made business, Ahmed expects to see clinics jostling for the attention of larger firms. Prime Healthcare Group has already been aggressively pursuing large contracts for renewal visas.

"Depending on the company size and location we have a mobile team that goes to the office and collects [the required] samples," explains Ahmed. "We have been doing this for a lot of the big corporations and I am sure that we will be doing the same thing for the new visas.

On-site visits can benefit both the company and the provider. Employees are not absent for costly periods during the working day, while the mobile unit relieves any strain on the clinic's space constraints. For Ahmed, the mobile unit has proved a springboard to bigger markets. A site visit to a branch of the Al-Futtaim group resulted in a contract to provide services to the whole company. Prime is taking no chances with the contract, investing heavily in technology to ensure the service runs smoothly.

"We are using a barcode system because it is such an important test and a disaster to get the wrong samples," Ahmed says.

Testing the water

Visa medicals are set to provide a ready source of revenue for Dubai's private sector. As a low-cost service, however, the size of the return is dependent on the volume of patients processed. Some smaller practices, hindered by space, are carving a niche in the market by offering concierge-style medicals to high-profile corporations. As well as fulfilling the requirements of a standard visa medical, these executive consultations offer a full check-up to staff. Despite being more costly, this service has proved popular among the larger corporate companies. The benefit to firms, explains Dr Sunitha Vaidhya, specialist pathologist at the Medinova Diagnostic Centre, is the reassurance that high-end employees are beginning work with a clean bill of health.

"We offer an executive package that is comprehensive for potential high-value employees. It tests sugars, lipids, and major organs such as kidneys and liver," she explains. "[Firms] want to make sure their employee is okay before they hire them.

With lucrative profits at stake, much work is put into securing executive contracts, Vaidhya continues.

"We have a whole marketing team and they communicate between us at the lab and with companies. They are the ones that go about getting us these clients. They are the ones who set out the contracts and we prepare a package accordingly.

The test is yet to come

Profits aside, the move to open up visa medicals should be seen as a sign of the times. Should the move go smoothly, DHA will be well positioned to shift more provider responsibilities to the private sector.

For Dr Jamil Ahmed the timing couldn't be better. With mandatory insurance just around the corner, the benefits of corporate exposure could be huge, he argues. "There is a lot of wasted time for companies in organising healthcare. If you can give them opportunities to save time, you can have good relationships with companies prior to mandatory insurance coming in, which will help keep them as customers".

Right now, however, the government might just be the private sector's most important customer, and the success of this venture could reveal what sort of shape the relationship is in.

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