Why Medical Tourism

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  Why Medical Tourism

As quality healthcare comes of age, Medical Tourism is fast becoming popular in Asia and the Gulf. While Asia has taken an early lead, Hospitals in the Gulf are recent contenders.

 Medical tourism (also called medical travel, health tourism or global healthcare) is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care[1].

 Factors that have led to the increasing popularity of medical travel include the high cost of health care, long wait times for certain procedures, the ease and affordability of international travel, and improvements in both technology and standards of care in many countries.[2]

Medical tourists can come from anywhere in the world, including Europe, the UK, Middle East, Japan, the United States, and Canada. This is because of their large populations, comparatively high wealth, the high expense of health care or lack of health care options locally, and increasingly high expectations of their populations with respect to health care. An authority at the Harvard Business School recently stated that "medical tourism is promoted much more heavily in the United Kingdom than in the United States".[3]

A forecast by Deloitte Consulting published in August 2008 projected that medical tourism originating in the US could jump by a factor of ten over the next decade. An estimated 750,000 Americans went abroad for health care in 2007, and the report estimated that a million and a half would seek health care outside the US in 2008. The growth in medical tourism has the potential to cost US health care providers billions of dollars in lost revenue.[4].

A large draw to medical travel is convenience and speed. Countries that operate public health-care systems are often so taxed that it can take considerable time to get non-urgent medical care. The time spent waiting for a procedure such as a hip replacement can be a year or more in Britain and Canada; however, in New Zealand, Costa Rica, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cuba, Colombia, Philippines or India, a patient could feasibly have an operation the day after their arrival. In Canada, the number of procedures in 2005 for which people were waiting was 782,936.[5]

 Additionally, patients are finding that insurance either does not cover orthopedic surgery (such as knee/hip replacement) or imposes unreasonable restrictions on the choice of the facility, surgeon, or prosthetics to be used. Medical tourism for knee/hip replacements has emerged as one of the more widely accepted procedures because of the lower cost and minimal difficulties associated with the traveling to/from the surgery. Colombia provides a knee replacement for about $5,000 USD, including all associated fees, such as FDA-approved prosthetics and hospital stay-over expenses. However, many clinics quote prices that are not all inclusive and include only the surgeon fees associated with the procedure.[6]

 According to an article by the University of Delaware publication, UDaily[7]:

“The cost of surgery in India, Thailand or South Africa can be one-tenth of what it is in the United States or Western Europe, and sometimes even less. A heart-valve replacement that would cost $200,000 or more in the US, for example, goes for $10,000 in India--and that includes round-trip airfare and a brief vacation package. Similarly, a metal-free dental bridge worth $5,500 in the US costs $500 in India, a knee replacement in Thailand with six days of physical therapy costs about one-fifth of what it would in the States, and Lasik eye surgery worth $3,700 in the US is available in many other countries for only $730. Cosmetic surgery savings are even greater: A full facelift that would cost $20,000 in the US runs about $1,250 in South Africa.

 Are patients waiting in the UK? Yes they are - according to the NHS's own quarterly report, the total number of patients waiting for even a single specialty, for example orthopedics, is as high as 104,576 in the quarter ending June 2008. In fact more than 400 patients have been waiting for more than 11 weeks! 

However there are large barriers that have been restricting  growth in this sector. They are the perception that: 

• Some foreign countries are:
  • Low tech
  • Dirty
  • Corrupt
  • Incompetent
  • Lawless and unsafe
• Hospitals are unprofessional
• Doctors are careless and cut corners
• Lab results could be incorrect
• Drugs could be spurious
• Operations could go 'wrong' or get infected
• Hospital staff are not polite and do not know English
• Foreigners can get cheated

This is where we come in. We give the patient an unbiased picture and complete details of the choices he has. We appraise him of the fact that modern hospitals in the Middle east, Asia and the far east are:

• Accredited

• Technologically state-of-the-art

• Follow best practices

• Employ some of the top doctors in the world

• Cost between 1/4th to 1/10th as compared to the rate for a similar procedure at say, the US

• Can have less cases of MRSA and Hospital borne Infections

• and have results that are at par if not better than hospitals in the west

We thereby give him/her the opportunity to make a truly informed decision. Thereafter, if the patient decides to go in for medical tourism, we then support him/her throughout his/her journey to ensure a happy experience.

For details email:  

We give you the freedom to focus on what you do best - run your business while we take care of the day to day hassles of running an office.

References:

1. Gahlinger, PM. The Medical Tourism Travel Guide: Your Complete Reference to Top-Quality, Low-Cost Dental, Cosmetic, Medical Care & Surgery Overseas. Sunrise River Press, 2008

2. Laurie Goering, "For big surgery, Delhi is dealing," The Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2008

3.  Lagace, Martha "The Rise of Medical Tourism", Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, December 17,2007. Accessed July 1, 2008.

4.  Linda A. Johnson, "Americans look abroad to save on health care: Medical tourism could jump tenfold in next decade," The San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 2008

5.  "Health Tourism 2.0". World Health Tourism Congress. Retrieved on 2007-04-13.

6.  "Medical tourism growing worldwide" by Becca Hutchinson, UDaily, July 25, 2005, retrieved September 5, 2006

7.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism