Indian Healthcare Federation (IHCF), the grouping of major corporate hospitals of the country, has decided to introduce a uniform price band in their healthcare establishments. The federation has been able to rope in 22 corporate hospitals into this mould. The uniform rate structure of these hospitals and fairly uniform quality standards would be advertised abroad for attracting foreign patients into the country. IHCF will also come out with a code of ethics shortly.

According to Sunita Reddy, co-chairperson of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Committee on Healthcare, the IHCF, a brainchild of CII, has already submitted the list of hospitals with uniform price band before the ministries of health and tourism. The federation is looking for official support to promote 'medical value travel or healthcare tourism.

In a pre-budget memorandum, IHCF has called for a series of fiscal sops to develop healthcare industry into a 70-billion dollar industry in the near future.

"We have stressed the need for more FDI inflow to encourage and hasten the development of green field projects in tertiary care. The industry needs to be given infrastructure status and all existing and infield projects should be covered under it,” said Reddy.

IHCF has also requested for tax exemption from foreign exchange earnings and fringe benefits. The expansion of the list of life saving medical equipment that can enjoy duty exemption, tax consolidation etc were the other requests.