Researchers from the Texas A&M Health Science Center in Round Rock suggest medical tourism to the United States will increase as two things happen in developing countries — the wealthy class grows and access to the internet improves.
The trend has prompted Texas A&M associate professor Yan Alicia Hong, PhD, to examine medical tourism to the U.S. and ask the question, "Are we providing international patients the information they need to make informed healthcare decisions?"
Dr. Hong's research revealed the number of Chinese patients seeking care in the U.S. increased 400 percent between 2004 and 2014. The majority (70 percent) of these Chinese patients came to the U.S. for oncological care.
Dr. Hong also highlighted the following four challenges in medical tourism as ones that require immediate attention.
1. Unreliable assessments of healthcare quality in different countries, including a scale of price to outcome.
2. Insufficient information on and communication about the medical and legal risks associated with medical tourism.
3. Inadequate policies addressing the ethical concerns of recruiting international patients in clinical trials for risky or experimental treatments.
4. Growing legal concerns associated with medical tourists, including malpractice lawsuits for treating international patients.
"Rapid growth of medical tourism mirrors accelerative globalization…But how to ensure the patient safety, quality of care, ethical issues and legal concerns remain inadequately addressed, for patients, healthcare providers and policymakers across borders," wrote Dr. Hong. "Data are the very foundation for the making evidence-based policies and practices; but in our review of literature on medical tourism, we found a dearth of such data."
The study author concluded by suggesting more research should be conducted on evolving medical consumerism models and how telemedicine may play a role in medical tourism.
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