Every year millions of people around the world travel overseas for medical treatment, including a growing number of Australians.
But now Australia is fast becoming a destination for the growing Asian middle class seeking the latest technology and high quality health care.
It’s a lucrative export market which both Australia’s hospitals and the Government are keen to exploit, but doctors warn the country’s medical facilities may not be able to cope.
Reporter: Kesha West
Speaker: Steve Hambleton, Australian Medical Association President; Professor John Catford , medical director at Epworth, Victoria’s largest private hospital group; David Davis, Victorian Health Minister; Lynne Pezzulo, Deloitte Access Economics
WEST: Over the last decade, Australians have been heading overseas in droves, to places like Thailand, India, South Korea and Malaysia for medical treatments.
It’s often cheaper… and patients can combine a holiday with plastic surgery or dental work.
But as Australians fly out, a growing number of medical tourists are flying in… from New Zealand, the United States and increasingly from Asia.
CATFORD: I think what we’re seeing in SE Asia/Asia is a burgeoning middle class, tens of millions of people actually for the first time having resources they can use to improve their well-being.
WEST: Professor John Catford is the medical director at Epworth, Victoria’s largest private hospital group.
At the moment it looks after around 600 international patients every year from over 30 different countries including the Pacific Rim, Singapore and Indonesia.
And it’s Australia’s high quality, hi-tec healthcare which is most in demand such as robotic surgery, IVF fertility treatments and cancer care…
WEST: It’s difficult to assess how many patients actual travel to Melbourne specifically for treatment, but Professor Catford believes the numbers are growing and the economic potential could be enormous.
CATFORD: If you think of international education how important that is to the Australian economy, in Vic its the number one export in Australia its the 3rd leading export, I think international health care could rival that in a decade or two.
WEST: In 2011 Australia’s Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to conduct a study on Australia’s viability as destination for medical tourism.
Lynne Pezzulo was the lead author.
PEZZULO: We’ve got over ten thousand people coming to Australia for medical tourism, so it was 12,800 in fact in our estimates in 2011 there are though 5.5 million tourists a year in Australia so that only represents 0.23 percent of our total tourist base so clearly there would be a lot of work to do to expand that in to a really sizeable market.
WEST: The Victorian State Government, in particular, is keen to market Melbourne as a health care mecca.
Health Minister David Davis.
DAVIS: We see inbound tourism of that type as just one part of a broader health export strategy that the state is developing and that would include conferences and would include inbound research support and inbound investment.
WEST: Professor John Catford says red tape could obstruct those seeking to take advantage of Australia’s high quality healthcare…
CATFORD: We need a supportive government framework that actually encourages it and actually sorts out particular barriers or obstacles, a typical one would be visas so people can come in easily with their families support to receive medical care.
WEST: But Steve Hambleton, the President of the Australian Medical Association says it would be a mistake to grow the industry too quickly.
HAMBLETON: It is entirely appropriate that a first world country should be thinking about exporting expertise just like this but we have a problem here about training the next generation of doctors for our own domestic needs and when we have surplus capacity is when we should be looking overseas
WEST: While the growth of medical tourism in Australia would bring with it obvious financial benefits, for public hospitals the challenge will be ensuring that with that influx of wealthy international private patients there’d be no reduction in the level of service and quality of care available for local public patients.
The AMA says there’s also a risk that medical tourists could bring with them drug resistant “superbugs” prevalent in many Asian countries.
HAMBLETON: The reality is that if you like there its a good chance you will be carrying those multi-resistant organisms and when you go internationally you will take them with you. Now the problem occurs when you have surgery, major surgery, maybe a hip replacement or knee replacement and therefore you’re quite sick or quite stressed by that physically, that organism that you could be carrying with you could become invasive and if it does we won’t be able to treat it either and of course there’s a chance that organism will be left behind and we’ll actually see those multi-resistant organisms take up residence here too.
source: http://www.radioaustralia.net / Radio Australia / Home/Radio / Reporter: Kesha West / February 10th, 2014
