International Medical Tourism Conference
'Building a road map for medical
tourism development'
Sanigest Europe s.r.o., an international healthcare and management consulting company, has organised a two-day international conference to discuss the rapidly growing development of Medical Tourism.
‘By 2010 medical tourism is expected to be a $40-billion business, with over 780 million patients seeking care outside of their principal country of residence,’ the conference organiser points out. ‘The rapid growth of this industry, and the central role that Eastern Europe is playing in the development of a medical tourism market in the European Union, provides a unique opportunity to bring together governments from around the EU, leading insurance companies, providers participating in the medical tourism market, and patient associations to discuss the current and future expansion of the medical tourism industry. Likewise, the tourism industry in general will also be heavily impacted, bringing more business to hotels, travel agencies, and low cost airlines.’
Sanigest continues: In India alone, medical tourism is expected to generate $2.2 billion in revenues for providers by the beginning of the next decade. Last year, an estimated 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical procedures, and the number is increasing at the rate of about 15% annually, according to Zakariah Ahmed, a healthcare specialist at the Confederation of Indian Industries. Costa Rica, Argentina, Cuba, Jamaica, South Africa, Jordan, Malaysia, Hungary, Latvia, and Estonia all have entered into this profitable market, and more countries join the list every year.’
‘According to Christopher Jones, a faculty research associate at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore, the growing number of self-insured patients who decide to travel abroad for treatment are fuelling this trend. “With low-cost air travel, many middle-class people are accepting the promise of a vacation combined with their medical procedures, together, at a fraction of the cost they might otherwise pay.” At the same time, patient mobility in the EU implies that people are increasingly able to travel among EU countries for care, with their insurance company in their home country covering the costs. As waiting lists grow in the UK and other Western European countries, patients are increasingly seeking a solution to their problems abroad.
‘But by overall the biggest draw to potential customers are the savings, which in some cases could be more than ?70,000 after travel arrangements. Surgery prices are much cheaper in foreign countries because of lower costs for manpower, real estate and administrative concerns like insurance, said Vishal Bali, CEO of Wockhardt Hospitals, a Mumbai, India-based company with 10 hospitals in the country. The cost of surgery in India, Thailand, or South Africa can be one-tenth of what it is in the United States or Western Europe, and sometimes even less.
‘Some sceptics fear that the quality of care in these developing countries is inferior to what is offered in the United States; however, the hospitals and clinics that cater to the tourist market often are among the best in the world, and many are staffed by physicians trained at major medical centres in the United States and Europe.’
Conference and sponsorship details: http://www.sanigest.com/MedTourism/index.html
E-contact: pszilagyiova@sanigest.com.
01.03.2007
