Medical Tourism = Medical Competition?
The focus of discussion on medical tourism tends to be on price reduction and costs saving set against unregulated risk and the emotional costs of travelling to a far away destination for a surgical procedure.
There is a second meme that is also of some interest: how medical tourism creates a different competitive field by enabling patients to elect to skirt their own local regulatory regime by locating treatments abroad that have not been sanctioned in their own home.
For US and European patients, there are two areas where this may be of interest: new drug compounds and risky surgery procedures that have unproven efficacy.
What will be interesting over the next few years is to see how this impacts on the heavily regulated framework in the USA particularly.
There is a second meme that is also of some interest: how medical tourism creates a different competitive field by enabling patients to elect to skirt their own local regulatory regime by locating treatments abroad that have not been sanctioned in their own home.
For US and European patients, there are two areas where this may be of interest: new drug compounds and risky surgery procedures that have unproven efficacy.
What will be interesting over the next few years is to see how this impacts on the heavily regulated framework in the USA particularly.
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