Kill Two Birds With One Stone - Medical Tourism

Medical tourism is a fairly new term used to describe an amazing amount of
people globally that travel world-wide for health care. Why these people
travel and for what differs, but basically there are two types of medical
tourists - the regular tourist that adds a visit to the doctor for some
minor treatment, as part of his or her holiday, and the tourist travelling
primarily for medical treatment.

Before there even was a term 'medical tourism', it was common practice among
the well-to-do in third-world countries to travel to the USA, Switzerland
and Germany for medical care.
However, since the year 2000, this trend has been reversed and now countries
such as Thailand, are attracting patients from the USA, Canada and the
United Kingdom.

This new market has grown as modern health care systems all over the world
are struggling to meet the medical needs of their own populations. In the
United States, the price of health care is beyond the means of most and
there are an estimated 40 million people without health insurance. While in
Britain, Canada and Holland, socialised health care ensures affordability,
demand for medical services far outstrips supply and waiting lists for
surgical procedures or specialty medicine can be as long as two-to-three
years.

Today, governments, insurers and employers are carefully looking at
outsourcing medical treatments as a way to improve access and lower health
care costs for their citizens, policy-holders and employees.

Thailand's health care services are about one-half the cost of similar
services in Singapore, one-third the cost of Hong Kong and one-tenth the
cost in the United States.

Who are the medical tourists and what are they coming for?

By and large, medical tourists are travelling for specialty surgical and
medical services. The recent upsurge in the popularity of plastic surgery,
however, has led to a new wave of medical tourists and headlines like "Sun,
sea and surgery"
or "Scalpel tourism" have helped create the buzz for this growing
phenomenon. Medical tourism destinations, such as Thailand, promote the
benefit of high-quality medical care as just one more reason to visit the
kingdom.

Elective out-patient procedures like check-ups, dental care, and LASIK eye
surgery are becoming increasingly popular and there is a growing interest on
the part of the tourism industry to include these services as part of their
travel packages.
Higher intensity medical services, like spinal and cardiac surgery, pose a
greater challenge because these medical services are not as easily packaged
and require significantly more knowledge about medicine.

Bumrungrad Hospital, located in central Bangkok, is a major player in the
medical tourism field in Thailand, attracting over 360,000 international
patients every year from over 150 countries worldwide. But Bumrungrad is not
alone. There are quite a few other hospitals in Thailand and also in
out-lying regions that are aggressively marketing their hospitals to capture
a slice of this fast growing market. Both Bumrungrad Hospital and the
India-based Apollo Hospital were recently featured on the CBS award winning
news program "60 Minutes" as medical tourism destinations for a growing
number of Americans.

Reliable figures on the size and growth of medical tourism are hard to come
by, as government and immigration statistics do not yet categorize inbound
travellers coming for medical care.
That said, the Tourism Authority of Thailand is actively promoting medical
tourism as medical tourists on average spend more and stay longer than
leisure travellers.

So, whether you are the casual visitor that will take advantage of some
minor medical work while in Thailand, or you are planning your vacation
around your surgery, Thailand is the place to go and get it done
professionally and at an extremely good price.

About The Author: Larry Westfall is the owner of
http://www.pattaya-crazy.com