• Home
• Medical Tourism
• Step by Step
• Accreditation
• Financing
• Tax Considerations
• Air Travel and Health

Medical Tourism

Medical tourism (also known as Health Tourism) the act of traveling abroad to obtain health care, has emerged in recent years as a major new trend in the global health care industry, as residents of the United States, Canada, and Europe seek out affordable and high quality medical care in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

This represents a major reversal from previous trends, which saw wealthy patients from the developing world traveling to the West to receive quality medical care, and whole hospital suites in the U.S. being funded and named after royalty from Saudi Arabia.

The tide has changed through the conjunction of a variety of national and global factors: the exorbitant costs of healthcare in industrialized nations, the ease and affordability of international travel, the explosion of online commerce and communication, currency exchange rates that continue to favor citizens in the industrialized world, and the emergence of high quality, cutting-edge health care services in a range of non-Western countries across the globe.

Uninsured, Uninsurable or Underinsured

In the United States, health care is exorbitantly expensive, and each year millions of Americans find themselves unable to pay for the health care they want or need because they are either uninsured, uninsurable or underinsured.

Over 40 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and millions more are forced to forgo 'elective procedures' that do not qualify for coverage by insurers.

An estimated 120 million Americans live without any form of dental insurance. The resultant system is one that has left many Americans painfully vulnerable to sudden, unexpected, and overwhelming medical and dental expenses.

A recent study describes fifty-percent of bankruptcies in 2001 as being related to medical crises*, and each year millions of Americans are forced to choose between incurring crushing debt or foregoing medical procedures.

Medical tourism to find safe and affordable health care abroad is the logical, one might say inevitable, outcome of this state of affairs.

Waiting

In Europe the dilemma of medical decision-making often relates to long waiting times for procedures because of back-ups in overextended state-run medical systems. Waiting times of many months for cardiac and orthopedic operations, for example, are not unheard of.

Yet, private health care services are also very costly throughout much of Europe, and pose a substantial, sometimes insurmountable, barrier to people in their search for quality care.

As a result, many Europeans, like their American counterparts, are turning abroad to find solutions to their health care needs.

A Global Alternative

Medical Tourism has emerged as a viable health care alternative for many Westerners for a variety of reasons. Among these, of course, is the fact that so many Westerners are blessed with substantial prosperity relative to the rest of the world.

Dollars and Euros go a long way in most countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. That said, there have also been important developments in many non-Western countries that have also created the trend towards medical tourism. Many non-Western countries have sophisticated medical delivery systems in place, where facilities and services are based on the Western model, equipment is cutting edge and world class, and many of the physicians have either trained or worked in the U.S. or Europe.

Typically these facilities first arose to care for the affluent members of their societies who demanded, expected, and paid for high quality health care. The result (with notable exceptions like Costa Rica) has been the emergence of a two tiered medical system: one, a government subsidized public health system, often quite sub-standard, and secondly, a highly developed and professional private sector. With much lower litigation expenses, lower salaries, and lower overhead, these latter institutions are equipped to offer Westerners high quality medical care at a fraction of the cost of similar care at home.

While it remains to be seen how countries hosting medical tourists will respond to this growing trend, it can be hoped their governments will translate some portion of medical tourism revenues towards improving their state-financed health care systems.

Medical tourism is not a completely new phenomenon. For years, savvy travelers have gone abroad to a select group of medical centers around the globe for medical, dental and cosmetic surgery procedures, seeking and finding significant cost savings without sacrificing quality of care. In recent years, however, both health providers and national governments have taken increasing notice of this growing source of income and begun to formally plan and develop medical infrastructures to cater to this new trend.

Furthermore, an increasing number of Western-trained physicians from the developing world have returned to their country of origin to practice. The result is that a "perfect storm" of positive factors have come together to offer real, high quality medical alternatives to Westerners faced with significant costs or waiting times at home. The era of medical tourism on a global scale has arrived.