Travelling abroad for health and wellness purposes, or medical tourism, is no longer an exceptional phenomenon. Countries with the developed healthcare systems and unique treatment techniques are ready to admit foreigners regardless of their origin country.
Modern world already has enough data to determine the risks and benefits of receiving medical care abroad, as well as the most popular medical destinations.
Causes of seeking medical help abroad
There are few factors that can make a person seek medical services beyond the borders of the native country:
- Lower costs of the medical care: For instance, over 1.4 million US citizens travelled to other countries for the health reasons last year. This allowed them to save 30%-65% of the total treatment cost when compared to the US prices.
- Availability of the state-of-art equipment and doctors, who are qualified enough to work with it. For instance, proton therapy involves expensive systems and has strict requirements to the radiological safety. Naturally, not all radiation therapists are able to perform the procedure in a proper way.
- Availability of the novel medications: A time gap between the completion of the clinical trial and receiving access to the medical market may last few months or even years. For instance, only 59 drugs have received FDA approval in 2018, and this is a large number. In some countries the accelerated approval is possible, so patients can receive the innovative drugs earlier.
The most popular medical destinations
Most patients visit hospitals abroad for one of the following reasons:
- Cancer treatment, including minimally invasive surgery, biological therapy, proton therapy, etc.
- Neurosurgery, including stereotactic radiosurgery.
- Cardiac surgery and other cardiological interventions.
- Organ transplantation, which is not allowed in all countries worldwide.
- Weight loss and cosmetic surgery, including the private treatment.
- Diagnosis making in the complicated clinical cases.
- Rehabilitation after the main treatment course.
More rare cases include therapy of genetic disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and mental conditions.
How to receive medical services in the foreign clinic
Fortunately, most large and/or specialized hospitals offer medical services to the foreign patients. Some non-citizens can receive treatment under the terms of their international health insurance, others need to arrange and cover the whole procedure by themselves.
If you are going to receive treatment abroad for the first time or want to save your time and money, it is better to use the services of Booking Health.
Booking Health is a certified multinational medical tourism provider (certificate ISO 9001:2015) that successfully works with patients from 75 countries.
Should you leave the request with contact and basic medical information on the Booking Health website, and medical advisors and coordinators will help you with choosing the most appropriate hospital and doctor, booking the appointment, finding the interpreter and medical reports translation, control of all the expenses and avoiding overpricing, etc.
