Tag Archives: health tourism

How to choose a right destination for medical tourism

International health travelers planning medical travel abroad have to decide where to go for health care. There is a big deal of medical directories, different associations, societies and et cetera registered all over the world which are competing in helping to find the best place for treatment oversees and promoting particular countries, hospitals and providers.

 

The problem is that such helpers have as a rule no legal obligations, and approaches used are not always convincible, appropriate and efficient.

 

It remains a big challenge for medical traveler to find a trusted source for reliable online health information about the right destination for medical care including evidence-based medical information, quality reports, certification or accreditation, mortality data, infection rates, performance data and to protect himself from misleading health information.

 

Recognizing that European citizens are avid consumers of health related information on the Internet and recognizing that the difficulties by evaluating of medical information available, the European Council at Feira on June 19-20 2000 supported an initiative within eEurope 2002 and as a result Quality Criteria for Health Related Websites were developed in widespread consultation with representatives of private and public eHealth websites and information providers, other industrial representatives, public officials, and representatives of government departments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations.

These criteria consist of 6 major points and should be applied in addition to relevant Community law:

 

Transparency and Honesty Authority Privacy and data protection Updating of information Accountability Accessibility

 

Health On the Net Foundation from Swiss /www.hon.ch/, one of most respected not-for-profit portals to medical information on the Internet, established its code of ethical conduct which is based on Quality Criteria for Health Related Websites of the European Council.

 

We recognize the HONcode as a minimal requirement for any health related websites and websites dealing with medical tourism as well. Any patient looking for medical care abroad is advised to check the present of the the HONcode on the website of provider or facilitator of health services. It is the start but not enough for choosing a right destination.

 

That is why the Institute for Cross-Border Health Care (Homepage: www.meditravel-plus.com) established guidelines with the aim to help international health travelers to choose a right destination for medical travel and to assist individuals in making more informed health and healthcare decisions. These guidelines can be consistently used by international health travelers planning medical travel abroad.

 

Institute for Cross-Border Health Care guidelines on general principles of destination evaluation for medical care:

 

1. Not rely on advertising but critically analyze and check statistics, medical data bases and not at the least use your own common sense. 

 

2. Be aware of the fact that some destinations have not only price advantages but of course some disadvantages as well. The quality of overseas hospitals and providers remains the most important and controversial issue.

 

3. Be sure that a destination where you are going to medical treatment is able to fulfill and satisfy all requirements needed according to US and EU standards to health care.

 

4. Pay attention at the provision of healthcare, life expectancy and maternal mortality ratio according to Mortality Country Fact Sheet of WHO (World Health Organization) within the country advertising itself as an attractive destination for medical travel. 

 

5. Be aware of possibility of outbreak of pandemic as a result of poor hygiene conditions over the inhabitants

 

6. Consult health care data of a country in question and try to understand, whether or not it is worthy to go there and whether the services of the local medical provider could be trusted of. For more information it could be useful for medical tourists to visit the website of WHO: www.who.int/countries, which is available now in 6 international languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish.

 

7. Pay attention at the fact which total expenditure on health as % of Gross Domestic Product a destination country has and try to learn whether the destination country is able to provide health care for its own citizens, including doctors and medical stuff of the hospitals. 

 

8. Try to learn whether legal procedures, law medical standards comply with US and European law

 

9. Be informed of responsibility for clinical oversight with the country of treatment and check legal status of providers

 

10. Be certain that the transfer of your medical records to and from facilities outside your home country is consistent with USA and EU guidelines and local follow-up care could be coordinated

 

11. Be informed of your rights and legal recourse, complaint proceduresin the case of undesirable outcomes prior to agreeing to travel outside your country for medical care

 

12. Be certain that you could resort to the legal process and obtain remedies in case of complication and should anything go wrong. So you can avoid an increased risk and uncalculated spending

 

13. Inform yourself about general agenda as domestic security, terrorism and political instability  

 

14. Inform yourself about the prevalence of the corruption in Public and Other Institutions, which could infect local hospitals and health care in general. For more information about Bribe payer index and Global Corruption Barometer, please consult the website of Transparency International:www.transparency.org. The information about corruption is available in 7 international languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

 

15. Inform yourself about circulation of faked medication. Particularly in the developing world some countries praised in advertising as medical travel destinations are supposed and proved to be the centers of faked medication production.

 

16. Try to understand that a variety of different factors could result that the price you pay for affordable and chip surgery would be in the end very big. And it is not only about the money. In our globalized world it is difficult sometimes to compete well with chip prices. But chip medical services could always be not good nor has a good quality.

 

17. Be aware about differences in nutritional habits, religious practices, family interactions and other customs

 

18. Be informed aware of standards of clinical excellence, pre and post operative care, levels of English spoken and medical training, cultural and language barriers

 

 

Medical Tourism: Kidney transplant in Mexico

Medical Tourism: High Quality, Low cost kidney transplant in Mexico and overseas . Interview with dr. Lopez Corona from Hospital Angeles by medical tourism company WorldMed Assist. For more information visit: www.worldmedassist.com
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Medical Tourism

Whenever we hear the term “Medical Tourism”, it invokes a mixed expression in our minds, one as a promising new alternative for the people who had to rely on already outstretched Public healthcare system in western countries, and the second is the uncertainty about the quality offered. The portmanteau “Medical Tourism” was created way back in the late 80’s by Travel agents and media as a catchall phrase to describe a new trend where people travel to other countries to obtain cheaper medical care. As we speak, this phenomenon has reached to a point where it has become one of the most promising foreign exchange revenue earners in some Asian nations predominantly India, Singapore and Thailand.

The reasons patients travel for treatment vary. Many medical tourists from the United States are seeking treatment at a quarter or sometimes even a 10th of the cost at home. From Canada, it is often people who are frustrated by long waiting times. From Great Britain, the patient can’t wait for treatment by the National Health Service but also can’t afford to see a physician in private practice. For others, becoming a medical tourist is a chance to combine a tropical vacation with elective or plastic surgery.

And more patients are coming from poorer countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, and many African nations, where treatment may not be available.

Medical tourism is actually thousands of years old. In ancient Greece, pilgrims and patients came from all over the Mediterranean to the sanctuary of the healing god, Asklepios, at Epidaurus. In Roman Britain, patients took the waters at a shrine at Bath, a practice that continued for 2,000 years. From the 18th century wealthy Europeans travelled to spas from Germany to the Nile. In the 21st century, relatively low-cost jet travel has taken the industry beyond the wealthy and desperate.

Countries that actively promote medical tourism include Cuba, Costa Rica, Hungary, India, Israel, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Belgium, Poland and Spain are now entering the field. South Africa specializes in medical safaris-visit the country for a safari, with a stopover for plastic surgery, a nose job and a chance to see lions and elephants.

India

India is considered the leading country promoting medical tourism-and now it is moving into a new area of “medical outsourcing,” where subcontractors provide services to the overburdened medical care systems in western countries.

India’s National Health Policy declares that treatment of foreign patients is legally an “export” and deemed “eligible for all fiscal incentives extended to export earnings.” Government and private sector studies in India estimate that medical tourism could bring between billion and billion US into the country by 2012. The reports estimate that medical tourism to India is growing by 30 per cent a year.

India’s top-rated education system is not only churning out computer programmers and engineers, but an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 doctors and nurses each year.

The largest of the estimated half-dozen medical corporations in India serving medical tourists is Apollo Hospital Groupwith 37 hospitals, with a total capacity of 7,000 beds, which performed an estimated 60,000 surgeries on visiting patients between 2001 and 2004, and now under negotiations with Britain’s National Health Service to work as a subcontractor, to do operations and medical tests for patients at a fraction of the cost in Britain for either government or private care.

Medical Tourism in India began to grow in the mid 1990s, with the deregulation of the Indian economy, which drastically cut the bureaucratic barriers to expansion and made it easier to import the most modern medical equipment. The first patients were Indian expatriates who returned home for treatment; major investment houses followed with money and then patients from Europe, the Middle East and Canada began to arrive.

Thailand

While, so far, India has attracted patients from Europe, the Middle East and Canada, Thailand has been the goal for Americans.

India initially attracted people who had left that country for the West; Thailand treated western expatriates across Southeast Asia. Many of them worked for western companies and had the advantage of flexible, worldwide medical insurance plans geared specifically at the expatriate and overseas corporate markets.

With the growth of medical-related travel and aggressive marketing, Bangkok became a centre for medical tourism. Hospitals like Bangkok’s International Medical Center and Piyavate Hospital offer services in over two dozen languages, recognizes cultural and religious dietary restrictions and has a special wing for Japanese and Arabic patients.

Even though most of the medical tour companies targeting cosmetic surgery patients often put emphasis on the vacation aspects, offering post-recovery resort stays and holiday packages, private healthcare consulting companies, like, MedAsia Healthcare who specialize in critical care services like open heart surgeries had gone one step further by providing personalized care to the patients by offering surgeon screening, treatment planning, insurance support and even the surgery loan processing on behalf of the patients. With medical professionals who know the psyche of the patients, they can provide that extra comfort on quality and trust.

Emerging Destinations

Other countries interested in medical tourism tended to start offering care to specific markets but have expanded their services as the demand grows around the world. Cuba, for example, first aimed its services at well-off patients from Central and South America and now attracts patients from Canada, Germany and Italy. Malaysia attracts patients from surrounding Southeast Asian countries; Jordan serves patients from the Middle East. Israel caters to both Jewish patients and people from some nearby countries, and South Africa offers package medical holiday deals with stays at either luxury hotels or safaris.

Dental Tourism

The newest and fastest-growing area of medical tourism is a visit to the dentist, where costs are often not covered by basic insurance and by only some extended insurance policies. India, Thailand and Hungary attract patients who want to combine a teeth whitening, extraction or root canal with a vacation. Most notable destination for Dental tourism is Thailand, where the competitions between the clinics for expatriate customers are clearly visible. In a way that competition is actually serving good for the customers, as the clinics deploy the latest cutting edge technologies, employ overseas trained and qualified doctors, and multi lingual marketing team to keep their edge on the market; says Dr. Bob of Bangkok Smile Dental Clinic, a pioneer in the dental tourism industry with multiple clinics in Bangkok. Clinics like Bangkok smile offers the latest same dental implants where by the patient can fly in and get the implant fixed on the same day and fly back on the next day instead of the 2 – 3 visits before, at their clinics for almost 15 – 30 % of the cost one would have to pay if they get it done in US, Canada, Australia or UK. As we speak, Australia is one of the biggest markets for these clinics, and tour companies like Aussie Dental Tours based in Perth, Australia are quick to realize that and offers escorted dentist visits to Thailand.

Raj Pillai

Before After Plastic Surgery Liposuction and Tummy Tuck

MakeoverTravel clinic medical tourism organisation show you the Before and After Plastic Surgery Liposuction and Tummy Tuck, plastic surgery in South America. Best plastic surgeons in the world are in south america. Medical tourism and plastic surgery at affordable cost. Plastic Surgery Overseas.

Interview with Suneeta Reddy, Apollo’s Executive Director of Finance

Medical tourism — the phenomenon in which hospitals in emerging markets offer “sun, sand and surgery” at low prices to patients from North America and Europe — is gaining in popularity. While India lags behind countries like Thailand as a result of airport infrastructure and other bottlenecks, health care providers such as Apollo Hospitals are expanding at 10% a year. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton at the recent Wharton India Economic Forum in Philadelphia, Suneeta Reddy, Apollo’s executive director of finance, discussed the company’s opportunities and challenges in this fast-growing market.
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