In the UK, we are luckier than we think when it comes to NHS healthcare. Even despite the ongoing backlogs plaguing it, our free and unfettered access to world-beating healthcare is nothing short of a privilege. However, both in other countries and our own exists a phenomenon, which seeks to circumvent the limitations and expense of domestic healthcare for the relative cheapness of healthcare elsewhere – a phenomenon called medical tourism.
What is Medical Tourism?
Medical tourism is a term that refers to the activity of travelling to another country for medical treatment. There are numerous reasons that someone might travel abroad in order to seek medical intervention: the treatment they hope to receive might be less expensive than in their country of origin; their home country might have laws against the treatment they want to undergo; they may also be hoping to receive treatment from a specific practitioner or unit, owing to their unique expertise in a given area.
Why Has There Been an Increase in Medical Tourism?
It is true that the medical tourism ‘industry’ has been on the rise in recent years, with a compound annual growth rate in double digits projected for the next four years. The initial reasons given for medical tourism still stand today, but its projected increase can be attributed to a number of specific factors, including a cost-of-living crisis gripping the US.
The US has a private healthcare system that requires expensive insurance to access, and can still result in serious debts even with coverage; the country’s cost-of-living crisis is a result of a mass labour shortage, high taxes and prohibitively expensive insurance premiums for healthcare. In some particularly extreme cases, it is cheaper for US citizens to take a two-week holiday in a country with free healthcare and receive treatment there, than to simply receive treatment at home. As the inequality gap between the world’s richest and poorest widens, activities like medical tourism become a financial necessity for many.
Risks Inherent to Medical Tourism
Whether you are seeking treatment in another country for financial reasons, or simply to access the ideal healthcare for a given condition, it’s important to understand the risks inherent to partaking in such an exercise. Complications during treatment may be more likely depending on the healthcare system to which you’re migrating – though in the event that a hospital is responsible for injury arising from complications, you may be entitled to compensation via a hospital negligence claim. There is also the risk of exposure to a foreign contaminant or virus with which your immune system is not familiar, which could result in long-lasting illness or the slowing of your recovery process.
