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Getting to know the giant of Southeast Asian medical tourism
Southeast Asia is unquestionably one of the most competitive and busiest medical tourism regions in the world. From luxurious and high end destinations such as Singapore to more affordable and noisier destinations like Thailand and Malaysia, this region has it all.
Thailand is already is massively popular tourism destination in its own right, but other than this, it also has a highly capable medical population that are largely educated in Europe.
A considerable part of the Thai economy revolves around tourism, therefore it is only natural for this country to be after combining its medical and touristic capacities in order to become a medical tourism power in its own region. This effort has not gone fruitless as Thailand is now the largest medical tourism destination of its region and one of the most popular in the world with more than 2 million medical tourists finding their way to the country per year.
History of Medical Tourism in Thailand
Among those who keep tabs on medical tourism in Southeast Asia, it is known that the roots of the industry in this region goes back to the 1990s during the region’s worst economic turmoil. It was during these difficult times that the three forerunner countries of medical tourism in the region began to utilize medical tourism as a tool to combat the economic situation at hand, these countries being Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
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While Singapore opted to found its medical tourism based on replicating the western model of extreme quality and high prices, medical tourism in Thailand took the path of affordable prices, exotic treatments and wide marketing of its medical tourism. In less than 15 years Thailand began to attract 1.5 million medical tourists to its borders in 2006, a number that since then has only grown.
Hospitals or Hotels? Why not Both?
Thailand is known for its massive hospitals that seem more like hotels at first glance. Medical tourism in Thailand is responsible for more than 9 percent of the national GDP. Therefore these hospitals are optimized to the maximum, often offering packages that include services other than treatment, namely housing, interpretation and travel.
The most famous of these hospitals is the gigantic Bumrungrad International Hospital at the heart of Bangkok. Bumrungrad is the largest hospital in all of East Asia and tends to the medical needs of more than 500 thousand incoming medical tourists per year, more than 25 percent of the country’s entire intake. The appearance of the hospital is far from the clichés and more so looks like a luxurious mansion than a soulless hospital.
Bumrungrad was the first hospital is East Asia to acquire a JCI accreditation and now there are 18 other hospitals following in its footsteps that have also received this certification.
Rare Treatments and Affordable Prices
In order to facilitate its bid to become a dominant medical tourism destination, Thailand has incorporated several rare treatments into its private medical sector that face legal obstacles in other countries.
For example many of the restrictions that are usually in place related to organ transplantation and live donors in other countries are absent in Thailand. Another set of restrictions that Thailand skips over are those related to Infertility treatments namely IVF cycles and donated sperm. Other than these, the more well-known treatments of Thailand are orthopedic, spinal and dental treatments.
Another rather unique strategy that greatly contributes to the large number of medical tourists in Thailand, is the practice of active advertisement targeting normal tourists in the country. These campaigns promote cheap “routine” medical services such as checkups and outpatient treatments. This way many of the tourists that originally had no medical intent in their travel are swayed into receiving medical care and become medical tourists.
As mentioned before, all the treatments that medical tourism in Thailand offers are much cheaper compared to their western counterparts. This difference usually lands on 40 percent compared to European states and 70 percent compared to the United States.
Short Medical Queue
Another set of optimizations that Thailand has efficiently implemented to its medical system are those related to the patient’s waiting time and medical queue. Even the most complex and multi-stage treatments and surgeries rarely have waiting queues in Thailand. Thailand shares this trait with other regionally dominant medical tourism destination such as Brazil and Turkey.
This feat has come to reality thanks to the overwhelmingly large number of active medical personnel that Thailand began to develop a decade ago. The high number of available physicians in different medical fields greatly contributes to the marginalization of medical queues and further instills a sense of security and ease of travel in medical tourists.
Luxurious Convalescence Resorts
Luxurious Resorts with medical services on the side, such as the one pictured here in Phuket are major medical tourism attraction
Another selling point of medical tourism in Thailand is the opportunity of having a relaxing recovery phase on their unique tropical resorts. Invasive surgeries are the most common reason for medical travel and post-surgery recovery environment is an important factor in deciding a medical tourist’s destination. In this aspect few countries can match the Thai offer of a luxurious medical resort on a tropical beach that also offer further physiotherapy and balneotherapy treatments.