Risks Fade from Overseas Healthcare

Medical Vacation: A Safe Alternative for Healthcare

Thanks to numerous success stories from India, the Philippines, and Thailand, patients have started looking at medical tourism as a safe alternative in health care. Many medical vacation countries have competent doctors who are actually trained in the US plus state-of-the-art hospitals with the latest technology available. As a result, perceptions have begun to change. There was a time when US health care was considered the best in the world, but it started facing problems when rising costs, malpractice suits, and insurance scandals began chipping away at the quality. These problems have yet to surface in many medical tourism countries, where low cost treatments coupled with luxury vacations have become the main selling factors. Many claim that treatment costs in some medical vacation destinations are around one tenth of what one might pay in the West.

The Philippines is trying to project itself as the world's most favored medical vacation destination. There are excellent medical packages available in which hospitals and dental clinics offer safe, quality healthcare coupled with ecotourism, adventure tourism, and cultural tourism. Some medical packages even include escort services so that patients need never be alone from the time they arrive until the time they depart for home again.

US medical tourism companies like Global Choice and MedRetreat offer affordable health care insurance to American patients who are either uninsured or underinsured, but willing to go abroad for medical treatment. They facilitate medical vacation travel offering these patients some security measures in areas still seen as risky. Affordable health care insurance is the main attraction in their services. But quality and success rates are also quite enticing. The casualty rate for surgical patients abroad is half that of most major US hospitals. Corporate hospitals in medical tourism countries have successfully treated hundreds of thousands of American patients. Overseas health care no longer seems to be risky. Medical vacation and medical package tours show no sign of stopping, and you can expect to see even more medical tourism companies and packages in the near future.

Source: Ann Tatko-Peterson, “Global Choice and MedRetreat part of move to Medical Treatments Overseas,” Medical Tourist Alert, October 10, 2006