Asking what is the best choice for medical tourism and medical travel is similar to asking ten people what is the best flavour of ice cream . Some of course is personal presence and preference / preferences . Other considerations are budget , location , time available to travel. Next is what is the procedure – some countries and hospitals / medical clinics / facilitates may be better suited or have more expertise , or chosen expertise in a given area of medicine and procedures.
As with most things in life – there is no one best answer .
Posted on 19 September 2008 in Uncategorized by admin
What is interesting to note is that even the medical insurance industry has now stepped into the act of evaluation , promotion and use of medical tourism both as a cost saving and queue shortening procedure..
Some will say that the basic tactic and reputation of insurance companies is to gladly accept insurance premiums while trying to shirk or avoid payouts. While this is not true, it is true that as if with any business profitability is key. Thus any cost savings or reductions are highly powered for any insurance provider or company due to its very powerful effect on the bottom line. Any cost savings are money earned for the firm. The one major concern to medical insurance providers who utilize medical tourism in an effort to save costs is prevention of any additional costs – whether it is for additional therapy when the patient returns home and has problems, or even of lawsuits. For patients themselves it can be a nightmare. The foreign medical care may be protected first by actual geographic and cost logistics, their legal and / or medical system and the costs of conducting legal actions in the far away foreign country. As a result the first actions of unhappy or ill treated medical tourists who have been sent for far away medical care by their health care insurance company is to seek redress from their insurance provider.
As a result health care insurance companies have shied away from using medical tourism and medical tourist facilities – at least until the cost structure more than justified it.
It is often asked what are the dominant and major players in the provision of medical and hospital services in the “medical tourism” industry to provide these services to “medical tourists”.
The major players in this market and the effective marketing of offshore medical services are Argentina , Brazil , Costa Rica , India or course , Malaysia , Mexico ( proximity to the United States and major markets , with a fair amount of seniors present – states such as Texas, Nevada , Arizona and California) , Panama , the Philippines ( especially to Asian medical consumers such as Japan and S. Korea) , South Africa , Thailand and Turkey.