Why the medical tourism industry must do better...much better

To keep things simple, this blog has moved to the IMTJ web site. You can find the Health Tourism Blog here in future. Here's an extract of the latest blog post entitled: Why the medical tourism industry must do better...much better

Whilst the medical tourism industry continues to sing its own praises and tell itself how great it is.... consumers are telling a different story. The 2011 Medical Tourism Survey being conducted by European Research Specialists on behalf of Treatment Abroad raises some concerns about the quality of treatment and customer service that the industry delivers to patients.

As results of the latest Treatment Abroad Medical Tourism Survey 2011 come in, we’re beginning to get an idea of how patients view the medical tourism experience. So far, we’ve managed to generate 860 responses to the survey from patients who went to more than 60 countries.  Each respondent completes a fairly detailed online survey that takes them around 5-10 minutes. The results are being analysed by an external research market researcher. (Find out more about the Treatment Abroad Medical Tourism Survey 2011). The aim is to generate over 1,000 survey completions to provide valuable insight into the medical tourism experience.

We’ll be releasing the full results and report in 2012, but I have taken a look at the “story so far” provided by the research. The bad news is that since the previous survey was conducted two years ago, the industry hasn’t got any better at what it does. Initial analysis, suggests that it has got worse. Patient satisfaction levels are down. When asked:

• “How satisfied are you OVERALL with your experience of going to another country for treatment?”

...only 65% of the patients say that they are “Very Satisfied”, and 20% say they are “Quite Satisfied”.
These results are disappointing; they are well below what you see when you research satisfaction levels for patients visiting private hospitals and clinics in their own countries.

.....Continue reading this medical tourism blog post on the IMTJ web site.

New health index means good news for medical tourism companies

The recently published Euro Health Consumer Index provides some interesting insights into the state of the UK health services and some encouragement for those who see the UK as a developing market for outbound medical tourists. The Index rates the public healthcare systems in 29 European countries on many factors such as clinical outcomes, quality of care, access to health services and patient information.

Austria emerges as the 2007 winner of the Euro Health Consumer Index, followed by the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Germany.

The UK comes a very disappointing 17th out of the 29 countries; its score is dragged down by waiting lists and uneven quality performance. Medical tourism destinations such as France, Belgium, Estonia, Cyprus, Spain and the Czech Republic all outscore the UK.

As a separate exercise, the Euro Health Consumer Index 2007 included a value for money adjusted score, the "Bang-For-the-Buck adjusted score", which attempts to measure the value for money which the consumer gets from the healthcare system allowing for the spend on public healthcare in the country.

More bad news for the UK National Health Service.....

The UK sinks to 26th out of 29. Only Bulgaria, Poland and Latvia do worse.

Despite the efforts of successive UK governments, the NHS continues to deliver value for money to UK health consumers.

And that's probably good news for medical tourism companies!