What is Medical Tourism?

Medical tourism is the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care. Services typically include elective procedures as well as complex specialized surgeries. However, virtually every type of health care, including psychiatry, alternative treatments, and convalescent care are available. Currently, there are over 48 million Americans without Health insurance, and millions more are “under insured”. Healthcare in US should not be a privilege, but a fundamental right.

A recent forecast states that medical tourism originating in the US will jump by a factor of ten over the next decade, making it one of the fastest growing Global industries. An estimated million and a half Americans sought health care outside the US in 2008, a number that represents 100% growth from the year before.

Although, a large draw to medical travel is convenience and speed, the primary benefits of medical tourism is the great potential for savings. Even when the cost of travel and hotel accommodations are added in, treatment in a foreign country can still be 50-80% cheaper, compared to the cost of having treatment at home.

Though it might come as a surprise to some, another benefit to traveling for medical reasons is that patients actually get better and more personal care at a foreign hospital than they can get at home, Hospitals that specialize in medical tourism create a cutting-edge environment, provide exceptional quality and service, a 1 to 1 nurse to patient ratio and state of the art facilities.