Medical tourism: The Asian chapter |
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Medical tourism—also called health tourism or medical travel—is a rapidly growing industry catering to patients who travel across national borders to receive medical treatment. In South East Asia, medical tourism is an increasingly common phenomenon. Overall, the number of medical tourists visiting Asia is expected to grow by more than 20 percent annually, creating an industry worth about US$4 billion by 2012.
Fueling this growth is the growing affluence of the middle class in Asia, allowing patients to travel for better quality medical care than in their own countries. Likewise, patients in Europe and the United States are traveling to seek alternatives to their own constrained health care provider systems. Quite often the price for a medical procedure in Asia is only 20 to 30 percent of that in the United States or United Kingdom.
To respond to this trend, many hospitals in South East Asia have adopted and invested in the latest medical technology to provide state-of-the-art care. However, as medical tourism encompasses increasingly complicated procedures and devotes more resources to nondomestic patients, challenges are emerging.
This report, developed by Deloitte Consulting Southeast Asia, discusses the rise of medical tourism in South East Asia, the changing profile of the medical tourism patient, and how medical facilities can partner with their governments to promote this lucrative market. Drawing on the lessons of globalization in manufacturing and IT, medical tourism will need to establish quality and consistency in their processes as well as work to balance growth with risk.
Ultimately, for patients to feel safe traveling abroad for medical treatment, excellence has to be a given. Providers in the industry need stringent standards and top-notch quality that will differentiate themselves from competitors. The medical tourism industry is still maturing and it is expected that there will be further evolution of the service delivery model in the years to come.
Download a copy of of this report below.
Want to learn more about medical tourism? Read Deloitte's Center for Health Solutions' report Consumers in Search of Value , a report on medical tourism from the U.S. perspective.
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Medical Tourism: The Asian Chapter
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