When it comes to medical tourism, Thailand and India have always been the major providers. Thailand offers a hospitality and personal service that is simply unmatched by Western hospitals, while doctors and surgeons are usually internationally trained and speak excellent English. Thailand is also a country well-versed in ordinary tourist protocols, making it a great place to rest and recover, while the local economy means that procedures, as well as accommodation and costs afterwards are significantly lower than in most Western countries. India, the other one of the big two, competes much better on price points than Thailand, and seems to have a more specific focus on dentistry as an international medical tourism procedure. However medical regulations and multilingual staff can sometimes be inferior to Thailand.
The driving reason to head overseas for treatment, for most medical tourists, is the price difference between host countries and the West. Countries like the US and UK, where populations are relatively affluent, also suffer from the high price of essential services. For this reason, medical tourism in Thailand, and across all of South East Asia, is booming. These countries have very different economic standards to the West, and as such, many new countries are looking for a slice of the medical tourism pie.
The Philippines is one such country where the government, just as in Thailand, is engaged in substantial activities to boost the medical tourism industry. Many of the same benefits as other countries are evident here. One of the main hospitals, St Lukes in Quezon City, has allotted significant funds to new technology investments. While the technology is still somewhat behind international hospitals in Bangkok and New Delhi, they now have the first 256 slice CT scanner in the country as well as other new CT equipment. The press in the Philippines is also pushing the medical tourism case, reporting on the growth of the industry in markets like wealthy African and Arab nationals, as well as baby boomers in the US and EU.
Taiwan has been focusing on its tourism industry ever since the election of the new President in 2008 and now has closer ties than ever with mainland China and Japan. However, Taiwan is also now targeting the US medical tourism market, for which hospitals in Bangkok are the usual health destination. Taiwan believes this tourism segment is more recession proof than the rest, as well as having much higher yield per visitor. Taiwan is banking on research that suggests that the number of US medical tourism patients will increase by eightfold from 2007 to 2010.
The international accreditations of hospitals in Bangkok have been a point of reassurance for medical tourists for years, and Prince Court hospital in Malaysia is following in their footsteps to get a slice of the pie as well. They hope to build on a 16% increase in their medical tourism numbers early last year, with accreditation by the Joint Commission International, based in the States.
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