﻿In 2021, around 3 percent of US travelers went overseas for medical or dental care. Worldwide,
over 20 million people cross the border to get cosmetic surgery, help with their
reproductive issues, or other procedures that are either unavailable or more expensive at home.
Top medical tourism destinations bring in billions of dollars every year, which is why it’s heavily
promoted and supported by local governments, making health care easier to get overseas.
The health travel market will only grow. According to different estimates,
the compound annual growth rate of medical tourism will be from
11.59% to 12.8%. Let’s talk about how and why this is happening.
Health tourism is the process of traveling to a different country
for medical treatment. People have been doing this for ages.
As soon as ancient civilizations learned about the benefits of mineral and thermal springs,
they started building complexes to accept health pilgrims. For example, temples to
the Greek god Asclepius were important centers for medical advice and healing.
In the middle ages, prominent hospitals in Islamic cities of Baghdad, Cordoba, and Damascus welcomed
people from all over the world and were the most advanced and elaborate institutions of the time,
where patients suffering both from physical and mental illnesses could be cared for.
Today, almost every nation in the world has advanced healthcare facilities and
medical staff to provide adequate care. So why do people still choose to travel?
The first reason is lower costs.
As recently as in the 20th century, patients from developing countries
would go to highly developed countries to access better hospitals and trained
professionals that their cities lacked. But now the trend is reversed. Globalization and
digitalization equalized the quality of care, but the aging world population surpasses the
availability of medical resources. So people from Europe, the United States,
and Australia go to Costa Rica, India, Taiwan, Turkey, Brazil, Thailand, Israel,
Mexico, and Malaysia to get similarly high levels of treatment for a lower price.
On average, American medical tourists can save around 30 percent on healthcare
procedures in Brazil and up to 80 percent in Malaysia.
The second reason is accessibility and comfort that international healthcare often provides.
To attract medical tourists, healthcare organizations in Turkey, India, South Korea,
and more offer entire medical travel packages that in addition to the treatment itself include
airfare, accommodations, transportation, health insurance, translation services,
and personalized assistance. In 2022, the Indian Government launched the “Heal in India” campaign
allowing patients to simplify their medical journey. On the portal, people can easily
find the desired treatment or hospital, submit a request, and get their travel documents ready.
This is in contrast with the level of attention patients can receive domestically,
especially considering long waiting times.
A medical travel visa is also a thing. To incentivize health tourists, governments
offer simplified visa procedures and extra benefits. In India, a medical visa covers
up to two blood relatives that can accompany the patient, and it can be obtained online.
The third reason is state-of-the-art medical
techniques and facilities that can be accessed abroad.
Although medical tourists usually pay out of pocket for their treatment, they are often willing
to pay for treatment in Canada, the US, and UK for their advanced medical services. Oncology
is the most common service international patients seek in the US. The United Kingdom ranks fifth
in the medical tourism index for their dominant research in the field. Canada is ranked first
though many Canadians still choose to travel out of the country for medical procedures.
Other top medical tourism nations might not be as progressive on the general scale, but
the investments in healthcare systems and medical tourism programs make them popular destinations.
The governments of Turkey, Hong Kong, India, and Malaysia invest heavily in
their healthcare sectors. The support for private hospitals, improvement of medical infrastructure,
skilled medical workforce, and advanced technologies make them modern healthcare hubs.
Safety and the quality of care is also typically ensured with
international accreditation. Joint Commission International,
the most coveted accreditation agency that ensures that international hospitals meet
the US standards, has accredited over 950 hospitals and clinics in 100 countries.
The fourth reason is a good reputation in specific fields.
“It’s the lure of cheaper prices and the fact that Korean plastic surgeons
are regarded as among the best in the world.”
Over the last 15 years, South Korea has become a plastic surgery hotspot. The
procedures there are known to be quick, affordable, delivering great results.
Around 1 million people traveled to Turkey in 2022 for hair transplants. For this reason,
the big Turkish carrier has been dubbed “Turkish Hairlines” over social media, as flying from the
country, you could often see many people who’ve clearly undergone the procedure.
Wellness tourism is also often considered a part of health tourism. And although we
made a clear distinction between the two in our previous video, it’s important to mention that
traditional wellbeing practices like Ayurveda in India or acupuncture in China attract tourists
who believe in their medicinal properties, even though there’s no proof of their effectiveness.
It’s clear what drives people to become medical tourists. But why
has it been growing so rapidly in the past decade? Well, the answer is, of course,
the greater than ever presence of the internet and social media.
Seven in ten adults research diseases and their treatments online, and almost thirty percent
of people have read or watched someone’s health experience on the internet in the past 12 months.
Patients find support and community in blogs and special platforms, sharing their treatment
experience and also information they’ve found online. When one person undergoes a successful
treatment overseas, others quickly learn about it and explore it as one of their options.
Due to distance, clinics also use the internet as the only way to
reach international patients. Besides, third-party facilitators similar to
travel agencies help patients organize medical trips. They not only assist in
arranging the consultation and booking the procedure, but also finding accommodations,
organizing transfers, and providing a personal coordinator to respond to all their needs.
Medical tourism generates massive revenues,
which unfortunately means that it can also generate fraudulent and unethical practices.
Promises of cheap or revolutionary medical procedures can often lure
people when they’re most vulnerable and are willing to explore all the options.
For example, stem cell therapy has been approved by the US FDA only for treatment of only certain
cancers. Yet some clinics outside the US offer unproven and unregulated stem cell
therapy. Not only are those treatments unlikely to help the patient, they may also leave them
in financial distress and with a high risk of travel-related complications.
Sometimes those complications can be fatal. Since 2019, 22 British citizens have died during their
medical trips to Turkey for cheap weight loss surgery. Attractive all-inclusive packages
and affordable prices make people ignore the clinic’s legitimacy or certification.
All of this, of course, doesn’t mean that medical
tourism is dangerous by itself. It gives people a chance to improve
their health more than they would’ve had and contributes to the global economy.
Thanks to medical tourism, the global healthcare industry has been
flourishing. Advanced medical facilities are being opened all over the world and
the increased competition encourages them to offer better care and more advanced medicine.
By 2032, the medical tourism market is expected to increase almost three times,
so we may expect to see a more complex digital infrastructure
around it. Apart from facilitators that play the part of medical travel agents,
we may see a network of online platforms for independent medical travelers,
for them to find and book medical services abroad and make all additional arrangements with ease.
We recommend you watch other videos from our Travel Works series,
where we explore other trending travel topics.
See you in the next video.