medical tourism facilitators) in the delivery of health care, and the novel responsibilities of patients seeking and physicians providing health care across international borders, among other concerns. These knowledge gaps persist despite an increasing desire amongst global health researchers to better understand medical tourism because of the implications this practice is thought to hold for the equitable delivery of health services, the involvement of new actors (e.g.
In addition, these reviews have indicated that much of the existing knowledge base is derived from speculative claims.
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#Processing appeals beholder 2 series#
Ī series of recent scholarly reviews about medical tourism have consistently revealed that there are significant gaps in our understanding of this phenomenon. In turn, medical tourism ties the interests of disparate populations together, for example by introducing novel global pathways for the spread of infectious disease and through the sharing of scarce health resources amongst citizens of different nations. The growth of the medical tourism industry has been made possible by increasingly globalized flows of trade, transportation, and information. These new patterns of trade have joined the long-established South–north and North-North flows of international patients to internationally reputed medical centres, such as the Mayo Clinic in the US, as well as existing flows of patients between Southern nations. Despite this, it is known that steady flows of patients traveling from the Global North (e.g., Canada, the United States, Western Europe, Australia) to clinics in the Global South (e.g., India, Thailand, Costa Rica) have emerged over the past decade. The global medical tourism industry is steadily growing, although accurate estimates of its current size or scale are not available given the presence of exaggerated figures and inconsistencies in tracking flow numbers, in part due to a poor universal definition of what constitutes medical tourism.
The elements of intentionality and private arrangement are key to defining which care-seeking behaviours constitute medical tourism as opposed to other forms of international medical travel such as formal cross-border care arrangements and emergency care for vacationing tourists, although the term has been used at times to describe all of these forms of care. The term ‘medical tourism’ describes the intentional movement of patients across international borders to seek medical care that has been privately purchased and arranged for. It is likely that trends observed amongst Canadian medical tourists apply to those from other nations due to the key role the transnational medium of the Internet plays in facilitating patients’ private international medical travel. The findings of this analysis offer a number of important factors that should be considered in the development of informational interventions targeting medical tourists. While Canadian medical tourists are often thought to be motivated by wait times for surgery, cost and availability of procedures were common primary and secondary motivations for participants, demonstrating that motivations are layered and dynamic. Neutral, third-party information sources were limited, which resulted in participants also relying on medical tourism facilitators and industry websites. Patient testimonials and word of mouth connections amongst former medical tourists were accessed and relied upon more readily than the advice of family physicians.
#Processing appeals beholder 2 professional#
Three overarching themes emerged from the interviews: (1) information sources consulted (2) motivations, considerations, and timing and (3) personal and professional supports drawn upon. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts followed. Interviews touched on motivations, assessment of risks, information seeking processes, and experiences at home and abroad. Semi-structured phone interviews were administered to 32 Canadians who had gone abroad as medical tourists. We address this gap through examining aspects of Canadian medical tourists’ decision-making processes. One such gap is a lack of engagement with medical tourists themselves, where there is currently little known about how medical tourists decide to access care abroad. In spite of these concerns, there is a lack of empirical research amongst medical tourism stakeholders. The growth of the medical tourism industry has raised numerous concerns around patient safety and global health equity. Increasing numbers of medical facilities in countries around the world are marketing their services to a receptive audience of international patients, a phenomenon that has largely been made possible by the growth of the Internet. Medical tourism describes the private purchase and arrangement of medical care by patients across international borders.
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