Global Health and Medical Tourism

Medical Tourism is a broadly used neologism used to describe the practice of leaving one's domicile community to access treatment, diagnostics or elective health and wellness services in a place other than their home community. It may also referred to as cross-border healthcare, global care, globally integrated care, medical travel, organ transplant tourism, dental tourism.

The practice is not new, and was very popular in ancient Rome and Greece when citizens traveled to other parts of the empire to visit spas, seek treatments, etc. In later days, it was also popular where one might travel to Colorado to tuberculosis sanatorium, or to warm weather climates to abate rheumatological symptoms.

Recent studies published my McKinsey and Deloitte cite traffic into the US in 2008 at more than 400,000 non-U.S. residents who sought care in the United States, known as inbound medical tourism, and spent almost $5 billion for health services. Not included in this calculation are the cases and revenues that came from other cities and states not typically included in a U.S. providers' relevant geographic market.

Do the math:
400,000 non-U.S. residents
7569 licensed US hospitals

Average 53 cases per hospital
$660,000 per hospital in revenue
$12,464 per case revenue

More than 750,000 Americans (with enough cash to pay for the cost of their care and the travel expense) left the country last year to access less expensive or unavailable medical treatments, a number projected to grow to six million by 2010, potentially costing our U.S. health care system billions.”

Americans primarily seek this sort of care for elective surgical procedures, but many are medically necessary and have no tourism or leisure component associated with the trip.

This represents:
$15.9 billion in lost revenue for U.S. health care providers.

With 7569 hospitals nationwide (5/2009), each hospital's share of those cases is at least 10 of those cash cases next year!
Average revenue per case = $21K per case.

Silos of Care Abound
In its current state of development, the continuum of care in medical tourism is rarely integrated to coordinate pre-departure and destination care with aftercare. This presents challenges to produce data across disconnected delivery systems to measure quality and outcomes, regardless of where the care takes place.

Popular Medical Tourism Services
Plastic surgery
Medical spa services
Orthopedic surgery
Cardiologic surgery
Bariatric surgery
Cancer treatment
Fertility / IVF
Diagnostic testing
Gender reassignment surgery
Executive Checkups


There may be many motivating factors
-Not about the price; its about access to care in a timely manner
-Reputation of a renown provider
-Perceived or technical quality
-Access to technology not present in one’s local community
-Convenience and service and coordination with some other activity or travel planned in your area
-Privacy and confidentiality and removal away from the local healthcare community and familiar eyes
-Second opinion outside a close medical community of colleagues
-No interest in accessing treatment abroad
-Price comparison not significant enough to warrant treatment abroad


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