Medical tourism refers to the growing practice of traveling across international borders in order to get health care or medical attention. It is also called medical travel or health tourism. The most common medical treatment or procedures involved are elective procedures and complicated specialized surgeries like joint replacement, heart surgery, dental surgery, bariatric surgery or weight reduction surgery and cosmetic surgeries.
A specialized set of medical tourism is the reproductive tourism which refers to the practice of traveling abroad to undergo in-vitro fertilization, surrogate pregnancy as well as other assisted reproductive technology treatments.
Factors that have brought about the success of medical tourism include the high cost of health care in the US and in other countries, improvements in the technology and healthcare standards in many countries, the ease of international travel, and sometimes the long wait times for certain medical procedures in certain countries.
Medical tourists or foreigners seeking medical treatment abroad could come from anywhere in the world. They usually come from Europe, United Kingdom, Middle East, Japan and the United States. This is mainly due to the high cost of treatment and large population which adversely affect the health care system in their countries.
For medical travel, popular worldwide destinations include Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Lithuania, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa and Thailand. Colombia provides advanced care in cardiovascular and transplant surgery. On the other hand, Cuba’s unique treatment for retinitis pigmentosa which is more commonly known as night blindness has particularly caught the attention of many foreign medical tourists from North American and Europe.
Recently, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, and New Zealand are also venturing in the medical tourism industry.
For cosmetic surgery travel, popular destinations include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico. Recent reports say that in Bolivia and Colombia, plastic surgery is becoming a very common procedure.
Here is how it goes. The tourist or the person seeking medical treatment abroad contacts a medical tourism provider. The provider will require the patient to provide a medical report, which includes details about the ailment, the local doctor’s opinion, medical history, and diagnosis, and other important information.
The doctors or consultants from the medical tourism provider will advise the treatment to be done on the patient. The estimated expenditure, choice of hospitals and tourist destinations, and duration of stay, are also discussed among others.
The patient has to sign consent bonds and agreements. After doing so, the patient is given recommendation letters for a medical visa, to be obtained from the concerned embassy. The patient then travels to the destination country and will be assisted by a representative from the medical tourism provider. After the treatment, the patient can remain in the tourist destination or just return home.
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