Usually travelers are hoping to stay out of the hospital when they’re on holiday, but nowadays, as we know, there are huge numbers of people who are combining the two: travel and treatment together. There has been a rapid expansion of the medical tourism industry over the past decade, but what has contributed to this boom? The main reasons are the convenience and affordability of air travel, skyrocketing healthcare costs plus long and often unpredictable wait times for care in the West, and an ageing global population.
You may also know that Asia is leading the way as the preferred destination for safe healthcare abroad . People are heading overseas for everything from open-heart surgery or total hip replacement, to dental work or cosmetic procedures like face lifts and boob jobs, and even weight-loss surgery . And they’re doing it in droves. According to most figures, medical travel is a nearly $15 billion business (USD), and accounts for roughly 5 million patients. In 2012 an estimated 1.6 million Americans traveled outside their country for care, and they headed to India, Thailand, and Singapore about 90% of the time when considering medical tourism in Asia. Just breaking down the numbers a bit further, it has been reported that 19 million tourists visited Thailand in 2011, and 500,000 of them were there for medical treatment. In Singapore, 10.2 million tourists spun the turn-styles at Changi International Airport and a robust 200,000 were seeking healthcare.
Given Thailand’s well-earned reputation as doting and graceful hosts, its array of top-notch medical facilities and services , and the exotic experience it provides tourists in the traditional sense, it’s easy to see why Bangkok is becoming somewhat of a hub for medical travelers. So what about Singapore? Singapore is a medical tourism heavyweight in its own right, due to its expertise in certain specialized fields such as oncology and stem-cell therapies, plus their highly-ranked and accredited hospitals, high percentage of English-speaking healthcare professionals, and the fact that the island is and built to standards that make westerners comfortable.
So we know why patients are crossing international borders for medical care, what they’re going for, and where they’re going…..but who are they? Are they all from the US and the UK? Hardly.
Just looking at health and medical tourism in Singapore as an example, the most common visitors for a healthcare holiday there are Indonesians who account for almost half the foreign patients the city-state sees each year. So Americans must be second, right? Nope. In fact, Americans and Brits, who at one time were 1-2 in terms of the most common nationalities heading to Singapore for medical care, aren’t even among the top five. Now, after Indonesia, the most are from Malaysia and then, maybe surprisingly, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.
Healthcare experts attribute this increase of visitors from traditionally less affluent countries to a variety of factors. For one thing, as India, Thailand and Malaysia have become increasingly competitive, patients in the US and Briton have more options. Plus, citizens in these other Asian locations are becoming more and more upwardly mobile themselves, affording them opportunities to go abroad for improved, more convenient treatment as rapid population growth in their home economies has surpassed developments in medicine. It’s not just Western patients who are done in by long wait-times at hospitals and clinics.
So if the demographics of medical tourism can change from predominantly Western patients to a more diverse mix for Singapore, it can change for other hotspots too, and has probably already begun to. India, Thailand: get ready!
source: http://www.mymedholiday.com / Home> Medical Tourists News and Views / March 26th, 2013
