The worst hit hospital markets
Just a quarter of all for-profit hospital markets we cover are expected to see positive growth in 2020, data from HBI Intelligence shows. Hospitals in East and Southern Europe, the UK and South Africa have been the worst hit in a year that saw huge drops in elective and even essential acute care.
HBI publishes actual pre- and post-COVID market sizes and growth rates on its HBI Intelligence platform. In the above chart, we rank the worst and least bad COVID impacts – the difference between beginning of pre- and post-COVID market size forecasts – by left to right. Intelligence data is available across 31 countries and 19 sub-sectors.
The vast majority of for-profit hospital markets are expected to see negative growth in 2020. We see the highest impact in Albania, Hungary and Bulgaria when comparing forecasts pre- and post- COVID. The three countries were expected to see significant growth but are likely to see big shrinkage. Some operators are seeing growth – Tritonlife in Hungary, for example – but the public payor is a big funder of the wider private sector there and limited activity over 2020.
Not all private pay markets have faired that badly: Russia and Romania have performed above expectations, partly because of public subsidies. The UAE and Saudi also continue to see high growth, but have handled the pandemic better than in Europe.
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