IRCTC, Apollo Hospitals tie up for medical tourism

To operate chartered coach from Kolkata to Chennai every 14 days

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has partnered Chennai-based Apollo Hospitals to offer hassle-free travel for people who travel for medical care. IRCTC is also looking to expand the service to neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in collaboration with airline services and other travel facilitators in those countries.

Under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Apollo, IRCTC will operate a chartered coach from Kolkata to Chennai every 14 days and integrate its offerings with the preventive health check-up packages of Apollo Hospitals to offer a comprehensive package to the travellers. The coach will be stationed in Chennai for three days and will return with the same set of passengers.

IRCTC will arrange the chartered coach in appropriate trains between Kolkata and Chennai, exclusively for passengers who have opted for Apollo-IRCTC package.

This would be a one-stop solution to preventive health check-ups for north-eastern states. The service consists of a comprehensive medical check-up package with return train ticket, local transport to the hospital, hotel stay, and local sight-seeing. The details on the pricing of packages to be offered are to be finalised and the services would be launched from mid-November.

"We are doing this on an experimental basis. Based on the response, we are looking at connecting the regions where there is deficit of healthcare facilities to where there are facilities available in plenty," said V Sriram, south zone director, IRCTC.

The service under the MoU is for preventive medical check-up and there would be various packages offered with certain discounts, said Pratap C Reddy, founder and chairman of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise. He said these travellers would also be offered with a genetic profile service in tie-up with Nashik-based Datar Genetics. "We hope the well-integrated services of IRCTC along with our clinical expertise will provide patients from other regions with unprecedented access to quality healthcare," he added.

It is estimated that every day, around 200 patients from the north-east visit Apollo's main hospital in Chennai.