Promoting Medical Tourism: The Obstacles

This book began with three illustrations of medical tourism: an American woman goes to Mumbai for hip replacement and later convalesces among palm trees, an Englishman has Lasik surgery in Thailand while his family frolic at a beach resort, and a Canadian mother skips the national insurance queue by taking her daughter to Costa Rica for surgery. Each example had positive connotations such as cost savings, exotic landscapes, successful surgery, and family vacations. However, such a rosy picture is not always real. Each of these three scenarios presents ample opportunity for unforeseen problems—medical and otherwise. The logistics of medical travel raise questions of how to solve these problems once they occur. Moreover, in receiving medical care in a developing country, medical tourists submit themselves to that nation’s administrative and legal processes in the event of a problem.