Patients beyond borders: A study of medical tourists in four countries

This exploratory study assesses the experiences of medical travelers seeking out of country health care in four destination countries: India, China, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. It aims to identify the source countries of medical travelers, to understand their reasons for seeking out-of-country care, the type of services they obtained, and their level of satisfaction with the experience. Cost, physician and facility reputation and hospital accreditation were ranked as the most important factors in choosing out-of-country care. Wait times at home or lack of access to care were important motivations for international medical travel. Patient assessment of treatment outcomes is as high as might be found in similar assessments in high-income country facilities. Certain forms of treatment sought by respondents (i.e. organ transplantation) raise specific ethical concerns. Also of concern is that the present health systems in all four countries fail to adequately meet the health needs of their population (notably poorer groups). Evidence and inference strongly suggest that access to health care for poorer groups will worsen in these countries as medical tourism increases, at least in the short term, raising generic ethical and policy challenges over the extent to which access to essential health care by poorer persons is compromised by the public subsidization or promotion of medical tourism.