How to Reduce On Your Medical Bills With Medical Tourism and Health Tourism?

Many times you may have listened new stories about the rising trend of medical tourism in developed countries. Medical Patients move around the globe to find medical procedures for getting an appropriate solution to their health related needs. One must have health insurance since traveling to a foreign country seems like paying less if there’s a real chance for good quality and affordable healthcare.

Find out exactly about medical tourism and health tourism means for an person?

The word “medical and health tourism” refers to people who travel abroad to developing countries like India, Mexico and Cost Rica for any sort of medical treatment and care. Before, medical tourists were generally wealthy and affluent patients looking for some health treatments that were not available in their own country.

However, today it is seen that medical patients favor traveling to other countries in an effort to control the costs of their medical care. Looking at the medical costs incurred in the treatment, patients find it much reasonable to pay the travel costs and travel abroad for their care. This helps in reducing the costs involved in the treatment. For example, if an Indian hospital charges $10,000 for an open-heart surgery, this surgery costs around $30,000 in UK and $100,000 in U.S. Looking at the potential savings, this do not surprises at all.

Additionally, patients have to wait for long to get treated in U.S. Sometimes, a major surgery is planned for coming few weeks and sometimes even days. Some of the most popular medical tourism destinations are Singapore, Thailand, India, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and South Africa.

To avail the benefits of health tourism, certain things need to be considered beforehand. For instance,

a.       The Person should be healthy enough to travel abroad for getting the treatment done.

b.      The individual must calculate the complete cost of treatment including the traveling expenses.

c.       The individual should have some health insurance coverage for the treatment or procedure. Also, your health insurance might not cover foreign treatment.

d.      The individual should inquire completely about the medical tourism provider including the details of the doctors and facilities there.

There is no doubt that medical tourism might save a lot of money, but you must not ignore the possible risks involved in it.

The most important thing to consider is Licensing and Certification. The person should inspect about the credentials of the physician who will treat you.

Do confirm whether the hospital and services you are considering have received authorization parallel to what you may find in the United States. For Americans, the recognized accreditation group is the Joint Commission International (JCI). It is the international arm of the Joint Commission in the U.S. and a non-profit organization that accredits U.S. hospitals. Most of the hospitals which serve international patients have already obtained JCI accreditation in an effort to attract more American patients.

You should not miss consider the worst case scenario that may occur. If things go wrong, you may find yourself in a foreign country without any ability to seek compensation for malpractice.

The person should look for hospitals that allow enough follow-up and recovery time as your medical tourism consultant may not tell at the initial stage and is just in the business of getting patients in and out quickly. In such scenarios, required follow-up care is not provided after the treatment. Traveling too soon after surgery may cause serious complications.

The person should have exposure to disease and have built up the immunity required in case of weakened individuals. Some countries, such as India, Malaysia, or Thailand have very different infectious disease-related epidemiology to Europe and North America.