Growing Medical Tourism Sector needs Regulatory Control

The fast growing and lucrative medical tourism industry has grown to such an extent that it now needs an international regulatory body and an advertising code of conduct.

These were two of the recommendations a panel of five experts delivered in a session entitled the "The Diagnostics of Medical Travel" during the 55th PATA Annual Conference in Pattaya, Thailand, where hundreds of representatives from the travel industry in Asia Pacific gathered for a three-day event with the theme, "Changing Lifestyles -- New Opportunities."

Dr Ridzwan Bakar, immediate-past president of the Asian Hospital Federation, said over two million tourists took trips to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and India last year and combined the trip with some sort of medical procedure at a hospital or clinic.

He said health tourists spent an average of US$362 per day compared to US$144 for leisure travellers.

However, he said there needed to be guidelines on the ethics of advertising and using images of patients to promote medical travel.

"We have to be very wary of some of the claims we see on the Internet [and whether] unnecessary surgery is being recommended."

India is aggressively promoting medical tourism in the pursuit of foreign exchange. The India Medical Tourism Expo will take place in London in June and the Indian government is to issue a medical tourism visa to promote the sector.

In Malaysia, Dr Ridzwan said the government first promoted medical tourism in 1998. It now estimates the sector is worth US$40 million a year.

Visitors from Europe and North America are attracted to medical facilities in Southeast Asia due to sharp price advantages, short or no waiting lists, and professional standards often on a par with European, American and Australian hospitals.

But the lucrative potential of the sector has to be tempered by awareness of the risks, said Mr Jason Yap, Director-Healthcare Services, Singapore Tourism Board. The sector was fraught with "high stakes, potential disasters and lifelong consequences". "Therefore we have a greater duty to improve care and create higher standards," he said.

Mr Yap said Singapore had taken the strategic decision to promote medical tourism to create enough work for its doctors. He said many of them would otherwise be tempted abroad - especially doctors with top-end specialist skills who may not enjoy frequent demand in Singapore, which only has a population of four million.

Mr Curtis Schroeder, Group CEO, Bumrungrad International, said ethical hospitals in the medical tourism sector should not have a two-tiered pricing system for domestic and foreign visitors. He added that word-of-mouth was the most effective advertising.

"Sun, sand and surgery" is a myth he said. "The first thing a doctor tells you after a procedure is, 'Don't go in the sun, don't swim, don't go in the sand, don't drink and don't over-exert yourself.'"

See other recent news regarding: PATA, Medical Tourism