medical tourism trend and increasing impact on the healthcare landscape

The wealthy citizens of developing countries have frequently traveled to the U.S. and Western Europe to seek the expertise and gain access to advanced technology available at leading medical centers. Recently, a trend categorized as "medical tourism" has emerged, wherein citizens of highly-developed countries choose to bypass care offered in their own communities and travel to developed areas of the world to receive a wide variety of medical services in order to save money. Medical tourism is fundamentally different from the traditional model of international "medical travel," where patients generally journey from less-developed nations to major medical centers in highly-developed countries for medical treatment that is unavailable in their own communities.

This report focuses on the medical tourism trend that will have an increasing impact on the healthcare landscape in industrialized and developing countries around the world. The term "medical tourism" does not accurately reflect the reality of the patient's situation or the advanced medical care provided in these destinations. Nevertheless, it provides an unambiguous way of differentiating the recent phenomenon of medical tourism from the traditional model of international medical travel. This phenomenon is driven by marketplace forces and occurs outside of the purview and control of the organized healthcare system. Medical tourism presents important concerns and challenges as well as potential opportunities. This analysis will examine the international locales that are experiencing a dramatic increase in medical tourism, with particular emphasis on Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.