China's first foreign-owned hospital seeks more medical tourists

The Star

05-06-2025

BEIJING: A Singapore hospital operator wants more international patients to seek treatment at its new medical centre in China, as foreign healthcare providers eye medical tourism as a new growth area in the world's second-largest economy.
Perennial Holdings Pte's US$139 million hospital opened earlier this year in the northern city of Tianjin, and is the first fully foreign-owned medical facility in the mainland. The hospital aims to derive 30% of its revenue during its first year of operation from patients visiting from Russia to the Middle East and South-East Asia - hoping China will become an emerging destination for medical tourism that can compete with established regional rivals Singapore, Thailand and Japan.
Perennial's focus on luring overseas patients to Tianjin came after China last year moved to allow private hospitals to be fully owned by foreign entities, which had previously needed a Chinese business partner.
China's health regulator has since encouraged the Tianjin facility to differentiate itself from the country's public hospitals, hospital president Daniel Liu said in an interview this week.
"Medical tourism has yet to become an industry in China, but it's showing promise. We hope to make the pie bigger,' he said.
"Some specialities in the Chinese healthcare system have grown in the past two decades, to a point that measures up to international standards.'
Private healthcare providers have faced headwinds operating in China as the country's post-Covid economic slump weighed on their main clientele - expats and well-off domestic customers with commercial insurance coverage. Some private hospitals and clinics have closed shop in recent months, while others have had to lower their prices, according to local media.
China can be appealing to medical tourists in part due to a speedier diagnosis and treatment process that can get slowed down by rigid referral systems and a lack of resources in other countries.
Still, luring global patients to China for treatment - especially when it comes to entering the country - still faces hurdles. China doesn't currently have a visa option for medical tourism, and the visa-free programme it's rolled out to more than 40 countries sometimes only grants stays of under a month - too short for some patients needing to undergo surgery and subsequent recovery.
Earlier this year, hospital chiefs and medical experts proposed creating a new visa for medical tourism at China's annual parliamentary session.
The move to expand medical tourism also dovetails with Beijing's goal to encourage more inbound travel.
Some northeast China hospitals are already frequented by patients from neighbouring Russia, while southern provinces are welcoming patients from South-East Asia as access to Chinese medical care becomes part of the government's tourism push, state agency Xinhua reported.
Perennial's Tianjin hospital is even hoping to bring in patients from as far as the UK, where private care is pricey and long waiting lists for the National Health Service have delayed treatments and even diagnoses of certain conditions.
To meet future demand from international clients, Perennial is working to recruit medical staff from Singapore and finalise global medical insurance coverage, Liu said. - Bloomberg