The Emergent Medical Tourism: Advantages and Disadvantages of the Medical Treatments Abroad

Abstract

Nowadays, Medical Tourism (MT) greatly develops, has received public reputation and becomes a new Tourist niche. Nevertheless, MT is still a badly known and not sufficiently studied phenomenon. MT represents 2 % of the world Tourism and 4 % of the hospital admissions in the world: it generates a 100 billion € fallout engendered by 20 million of medical tourists (Mt). The MT is appealed to develop considering the growing life expectation and the technological and medical surgical progress. It is other globalization effect and come within the framework of Social Security (SS) deficits and of reorganization of the public and private health systems in many countries. The challenge will be how to improve the quality (of the care)/price (reduced) ratio without falling in the drift of a two-speed SS medicine. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the MT concerning the patients, the country suppliers and the receiving countries.