Two sides of medical tourism

Medical travelling, health tourism, cross-border care – when there´s a hype the labels tend to grow in numbers. Every week I get invitations to medical tourism fairs and exhibitions, activities perhaps more frequent and economically important than the travelling and treatments as such. Not least Europe east of the EU seems to catch up, with numerous conferences and exhibitions in Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine.

Would you trust the doctor in Minsk?

Today probably not too many people would think of going to Kiev or Minsk to have a hip replacement but things might change. Belarus even claims to have a "medical tourism city" (see web link)... In Russia the target group seems rather to be wealthy residents interested to go abroad to avoid the many downsides of Russian healthcare. As there are no EU-Russia mobility regulations, going West will be expensive to Russians but the steady flow of medical tourists already flying from Moscow to London, Zurich or the US suggests that they can afford it.

Two lanes

As the inter-EU exchange of cross-border patients becomes more organised, with the cross-border directive implemented into national law, you can expect two major routes of patients to emerge: one for publicly funded treatments, according to the directive, and one for out of pocket paid services. The private one is alredy rich of cosmetic and life-style surgery but probably as well complicated, resource-demanding and sometimes accute specialist procedures not available in the country of the patient. The public alley will deal with treatments suffering from long waiting lists, lack of quality or unavailibility at home (see directive web link).

Which will be the broad way?

You shouldn´t be too sure that the public road will prove broader than the private one as many governments want to restrict travelling for care.

In the private lane there is a tradition of simplifying access, picking up the visitor at the airport and providing a smooth procedure, where the public process has a lot to learn. For both public and private there is a lack of information of alternatives and of outcomes transparency that might put patients at risk and anyhow will keep back the growth of cross-border care.

Johan Hjertqvist