Chances are, healthcare isn’t the first reason you might think of for visiting another country. Yet the practice of medical tourism continues to rise as populations in wealthier countries like the United States grow older. According to travel information from Patients Without Borders, the worldwide medical tourism market is growing at a rate of 15-25%.
What is Medical Tourism?
Medical tourism is the act of traveling to another country to receive medical care. This can be for a variety of reasons, but the most common is a cheaper cost for the same procedure at often accredited, high-quality institutions. Other contributors to medical tourism include US immigrants returning to their home countries to receive healthcare and treatments only offered in those countries.
According to the CDC page on medical tourism, the most popular treatments sought out abroad include dentistry, cosmetic surgery, and cardiovascular care. Since these kinds of procedures can get expensive, medical tourists often go to countries where they benefit from currency exchange and ensure their safety during treatment. As Patients Without Borders states, the top destinations are Costa Rica, India, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the US.
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What are the advantages and disadvantages?
The advantages include a varying amount of savings depending on the country, from Thailand at 50-75% savings to Mexico at 40-65% savings. Since hospitals seek international accreditation to increase their number of foreign visitors, this also motivates institutions to have state of the art technology and qualified staff. The revenue generated from medical tourism can also be a major contributor to the destination country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
On the other hand, disadvantages include a possible language barrier between staff and patients. Infections and antibiotic resistant bacteria can also be more common in low or middle-income nations that are popular sites for medical tourism.
In addition, the practice actually worsens healthcare inequity for residents in destination countries. Physicians in these medical tourism sites may feel more drawn to urban areas that offer state of the art facilities and higher pay for treating foreigners. This increases the imbalance between physicians practicing in cities and those in rural areas. As demand for medical services increases with the growing market of medical tourism, locals might find themselves being charged more to account for the cost of providing care for everyone.
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Medical tourism’s market may be growing bigger, but policymakers in both wealthier and destination countries should take measures to ensure safety and accessibility to all patients– whether local or foreign.
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