Medical tourism is a vastly growing medical phenomenon in which patients from around the world travel internationally in search of inexpensive and quick, medical procedures. These economically driven treatments can be as different as plastic cosmetic surgery to fertility treatments. The one aspect that they have in common is the poor quality of treatment and care some hospitals and clinics offer to patients. Medical tourism is risky at best with many aspects of the process lacking monitoring or standardization. The surgical procedures are often medically unsafe, illegal and could be considered unethical. Without a doubt, medical tourism is a growing and very critical public health concern. Despite the many risks, however, medical tourism is a thriving industry: 6 million US citizens alone continue to travel globally into the medical tourism phenomenon.India has become the center for medical tourism over the last 5 years. India is specifically known in field for its specialties in cardiovascular, neurology/spine, orthopedic, oncology and weight loss surgeries. Due to the income it has accumulated from the paying tourists, India is not only expanding in medical tourism, but other countries are imitating their medical entrepreneurship, adding to the growing medical tourism business.Medical Tourism is being promoted as a viable solution to the financial dilemma regarding the costs of medical and surgical procedures that often result in a medical disaster for the patient. The guidelines being proposed in this paper seek to protect the health and life of patients by making sure they are fully informed of the medical and legal risks and benefits of any proposed treatments and procedures they may seek in a foreign country. The only hope is that with appropriate guidelines and standards, medical tourism can be rendered medically, legally and ethically more acceptable and be in the best interest of patients, physicians and society as a whole.
展开▼
