Travel Agents should take note of Medical Travel or Medical Tourism as an emerging market. With skyrocketing medical costs here in the United States and all of the current uncertainties with medical insurance, medical tourism will grow dramatically in the coming years.
Medical tourism according to Wikipedia (also called medical travel, health tourism or global healthcare) is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care.
Such services typically include elective procedures as well as complex specialized surgeries such as joint replacement (knee/hip), cardiac surgery, dental surgery, and cosmetic surgeries. However, virtually every type of health care, including psychiatry, alternative treatments, convalescent care and even burial services are available. As a practical matter, providers and customers commonly use informal channels of communication-connection-contract, and in such cases this tends to mean less regulatory or legal oversight to assure quality and less formal recourse to reimbursement or redress, if needed.
Over 50 countries have identified medical tourism as a national industry.[1] However, accreditation and other measures of quality vary widely across the globe, and there are risks and ethical issues that make this method of accessing medical care controversial. Also, some destinations may become hazardous or even dangerous for medical tourists to contemplate.
There is a huge discrepancy in the numbers of American currently uninsured. On March 4th, 2009, Families USA claimed that 86.4 million Americans had no insurance at some period in the last two years. The Census Bureau states that the number of uninsured Americans is somewhere around 48 million. Bottom line, to many are uninsured! This fact combined with just the sheer number of baby boomers putting pressure on the domestic medical industry, is driving people to look across our borders for medical care that will not ruin them financially.
Medical Tourism is a legitimate industry that you the travel agent should educate yourself on. There is a local company here in Concord, California called World-Med Assist that specializes in providing the medical referrals.
With the addition and expansion of this industry there are new opportunities for the travel agent. With that opportunity, comes responsibility. The prudent travel agent will approach the arena very cautiously. Avoid recommending specific physicians, diagnosis, or treatment. You must act simple as a purveyor of information and not a medical-referral agent.
We will discuss this topic further in a later post, just be aware of this opportunity to become educated in this niche.
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As you mention, medical travel in Mexico and other exotic locals is becoming more and more popular all the time. And, having a travel agent who knows all the ins and outs of this can be priceless. Now is definitely a good time to get in on it.