Medical Tourism Evolving Trends

Talking of medical tourism or health tourism is not a new topic any more in health care industry and even in general population as well. Rising costs in provision of health and increasing waiting times has lead many people in West to fly to countries in Asia and Latin America to seek medical attention.

Started with tourists who sought some help at medical centers in visiting countries for minor procedures, like some plastic surgery of minor nature, the trend picked up and started growing, Almost reaching its maturity in terms of systems, processes, services, transparency, bench marks, continuity of care, quality assurance. And most of all the quality of care provided are all setting up a really mature and promising industry. World is aware of Google search engine, once some term is searched, it shows results in numbers, and about 8 to 9 years ago, the term medical tourism may only fetch few hundred results. But if someone tries it now it is in millions in Google and Yahoo, and other search engines. This is a proof of medical tourism fast evolving into a known industry and a trusted trend in healthcare industry.

There are many facets of medical tourism and it has become a ray of hope for Governments and Institutions, for patients and insurance providers. While on the other hand it has become a hope for healthcare organizations who are treating these tourists to make money out of it and improve their standards of care. Like if we follow American phenomenon for medical tourism, their hope is that it will bail out their healthcare system for quality treatment at no delay in getting procedures done and most of all saving huge amount of exchequer. Currently, total hip replacement, an orthopedic procedure costs about 50,000.00 US Dollars, while same procedure is done at 10 to 15 thousand US Dollars. More over current waiting time for this procedure ranges from six months to 18 months in USA while on the other hand medical tourists can book this procedure over night with a highly competent doctor at a medical tourism destination like Malaysia and India. This is increasingly becoming important for countries like USA, UK and Canada to bail out its failing public health systems, to provide wide medical coverage to large strata of population especially non affording healthcare insurance. Increasing waiting times in Canada has led to government of Canada reimbursing costs for medical expenses at overseas destinations. US companies are luring their employees to go for medical tourism trips, to get treated for high cost procedures like hip, knee replacement surgeries, cardiac, heart operations etc . More over when these patients travel overseas they land at good hospitals and experienced doctors, who are even better what these patients may have found in their own country.

Medical tourism related flight of patients away form US healthcare providers has compelled US and Canadian hospitals to find solutions for incompetencies related to long waiting time in important surgeries. Increasing price factor has also made healthcare providers in USA/ Canada to check this important cause of patients and insurance providers preferring more overseas destinations then local. Like recently US state of Orlando and Boston has started providing some low cost solutions for hip and knee replacement surgeries to US Companies, as these companies have earlier sent employees to overseas hospitals to cut cots. Hospitals in Boston have agreed to reduce costs to same as at one of the favorite healthcare destination in Asia. Over all medical tourism has lead US heaalthcare providers to reduce the costs and provide better healthcare services

On the other hand medical costs and expenditures are rising everywhere in the world, I could not find any country where medical costs have reduced over the period of time. These counties have found medical tourism a panacea for their burgeoning medical budgets. As the money brought by medical tourist patients can pay for uplifting the standards of medical facilities. We can very well know this from Thailand, where there are many improved medical facilities now, with top American technologies and equipments and accredited with JCI standards. Same holds true for India, Malaysia and other regional countries who have found money from medical tourism patients to pay for improving the facilities and quality of care provided. Though I have yet to come across any regulations by government bodies to make it compulsory, for institutions to spend some part of their profits, from medical tourism to uplift the public or local healthcare facilities. But we all can very well understand that improving standard of medical care in private sector in any country is an important area of development, and medical tourism has really spurred this in Latin American countries like Columbia, Mexico and Brazil, and also for Asian countries like India, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Thanks to medical tourism that latest robotic surgeries are now available in most of Asia Pacific big cities. This gives a choice for local community to avail it, as previously, people used to fly to American hospitals to be treated with advanced tools. Another evolving important aspect of medical tourism is hospitals getting better by taking accreditations from international standardizing bodies. Though some countries have already in place top class accredited bodies like MSQH in Malaysia, but this did spur the demand to further improve the standards to match advanced care in developed world to provide better facilities to incoming medical tourism patients. It has also started revolutionizing the trends of spending on technologies like RFID in healthcare IT related solutions and improved web based services.

Another healthy aspect of medical tourism on provider side is of, more transparent approach to match developed nations, best practices and processes are put to even better shape, and institutions have started putting proper descriptions to their services , rates are readily displayed for services provided, and patient rights and charters are more openly advocated. Patient education standards have improved and more and more emphasis is being put on keeping patients well informed of their illness and its management. This is a very important aspect to prevent litigation which has marred the process of health care in developed world, as it has resulted in increasing costs to set measures before litigations arise and thus escalating the costs of health care provision. Also empowering patients with education will result in better outcomes in disease prevention and progression and also will reduce the complications, and thus benefiting the implementation of more strict methods of this trend. Medical tourism has made it more important for healthcare providers to practice to prevent litigation on the basis of lack of information provided to patients.

An interesting development taking place is US hospitals, is their self venturing in opening their offices overseas to develop patient base and bring them to USA for further treatment. More over they are sending their own patients over seas to their own locations for low cost treatment, still keeping intact their health consumer base.These US hospitals are venturing to get some portion of medical tourism, offering procedures at over seas hospitals running under their care and command. The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, created the University of Miami International Medicine Institute, to focus on Latin America and the Caribbean regions for which the school already serves as a leading academic medical centre. The International Medicine Institute is looking into investing in a hospital in Cartagena, Columbia, and seeking associations with hospitals in the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. Johns Hopkins has not left itself behind and has invested in the Caribbean and Central America to setup Johns Hopkins Medicine International hospital. US-certified physicians perform several operations there at a fraction of US costs. Elsewhere in the region, Johns Hopkins helped Clinica las Condes in Chile to become the first hospital in that country to be JCI accredited. And few more examples are also there in which US hospitals and healthcare providers have worked with their over sees counterparts, to get benefited from US community traveling abroad.

Insurance companies are not left behind in providing some innovations to medical tourism industry and more and more customized and tailor made packages are evolving. A leading American Insurance provider has recently launched a plan for medical tourists from US, which will give them some cover against complications of procedures once they are back after getting some procedure done at overseas destinations. Same goes with insurance companies providing variety of contingency plans for medical tourists at overseas destinations.

Its just a beginning of evolution of medical tourism and we are yet to see, some real examples of mass medical tourism either from or at some over seas destinations. But figures quoted by leading international business consultants are amazing and it clearly tells of a real big industry in the phase of evolution.