Is Medical Tourism a Substitute For Better Healthcare?

Medial tourism is big business around the world and it is growing in popularity. To those who are unaware of what this is, it is the description of people who head off abroad in search of medical care. In some cases they do this because services and quality of healthcare is better abroad, in other cases it may be that it is lower cost than they would pay back home. To understand this a little more, let’s take a look at the stats around medical tourism, why it happens, where people are coming from and which nations are seeing the biggest influx in patients. 

Benefits of Medical Tourism 

There are a number of benefits of medical tourism which both providers and patients enjoy. As we have established, patients can count on higher quality service and/or lower cost treatments. Even including flights and hotels, patients can still save on what they would spend back home. Patients can easily pay for services like this abroad, using international money transfers which allow them to send money to African countries, European nations and any other location they wish to receive healthcare from. To host nations, they see a sharp boost in their economy owing to the money that is coming in through this area of tourism. 

Destinations and Volume

To understand the scale of this industry, there are currently around 14 million people who travel to other countries in search of medical care each year. The top two nations which receive medical tourists are Thailand which sees some 1.2 million visitors per year, and Mexico which sees around one million. The remainder of top destinations is made up across Singapore, India, Brazil, Turkey and Taiwan. 

Motivation For Traveling 

Estimates made from a Mckinsey and Company indicates that around 40% of the patients who travel are looking for advanced technology and better trained personnel. Additionally 32% of people are looking for better care and attention, 15% are looking for shorter waiting time and just 13% are seeking to lower the costs of medical care. These figures certainly contradict what many think about patients traveling abroad for low cost treatments. 

Healthcare Treatments 

The types of treatments performed around the world on medical tourists really do vary, but Mexico can provide us with a good example of why Americans and Canadians look to hit the road in search of treatment. In the main this is for dental services and cosmetic services. In the case of cosmetic surgeries the costs are 65% lower on average than in the US, and dental procedures are considered to be both higher quality and lower cost. 

In some rare cases we have seen medical tourists who have travelled abroad for drugs which are not approved in their home nations.

Recent estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have suggested that there will be an annual increase of 25% in the next decade alone. This further shows just how popular this kind of tourism really is.