Medical Tourism Insurance

Medical Tourism is a growing industry across the globe, around 50 destinations are considered today as valid places to be treated for cosmetic, dental or other types of surgery. The most popular ones are India, South-Africa, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Thailand, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel… The industry global revenues are estimated to be in excess of $ 100 bio in 2012, whilst 700’000 patients will be travelling for medical reasons in one year.

The type of procedures offered abroad are ranging from liposuction to breast augmentation (cosmetic), from dental filling to dental implants (dental) and from laser eye surgery to heart valve replacement (other procedures).

What are the reasons behind this flourishing industry? The obvious one is the cost of the treatment abroad that can amount sometimes less than a half as the same treatment in the home country, this including travel and accommodation expenses; the access to the medical facilities and surgeons is far easier than in the home country and the quality is at least at the same level. Furthermore the patients can add to the treatment an exotic safari or just a couple of weeks at the local beach.

Medical Tourism specialized travel operators, private clinics and hospitals, surgeons are attracting patients with attractive medical tourism packages including clinic, surgeon, travel, accommodation and entertainment. But what are the risks around medical tourism and what are the answers provided by the insurance companies?

Travelling: travelling is always a risk, whether by own car, bus, train or plane. Risks are including delays, cancellation, curtailment, loss of luggage/passport/personals, medical expenses, death, disability, repatriation, personal liability, legal expenses, etc… Usually these risks are well covered by traditional travel insurance policies. But did the patients check if the policy was not excluding applicant travelling for medical reasons? Most of the travel insurance will do so, so does a medical tourist travel at his own risk? Probably yes…
Medical complications: what happens if there are complications after the procedure? If the patient is still in the country of the procedure, he can return to the surgeon, but who will cover the extra costs of the stay? And the extra medical costs if any? But what is happening if complications arise when the patient is back home (in the US or in the UK), shall he go for local private surgery or shall he return to South Africa to get corrective surgery? Who will cover the costs? The NHS, the private medical policy? Probably not…
Medical liability: if something went wrong and additional costs are incurred due to complication, who will legally be liable for the monetary (corrective surgery, loss of income, …) and possibly moral damage? The medical tourism provider, the Indian surgeon? Probably not…

Medical Tourism is certainly very attractive to the operators packaging the services but is it really attractive to international patients considering all the related risks? If they would have a good insurance for that the answer would be probably yes. But such insurance policies are not well spread yet, although some US carriers and recently some London markets players have started to put some policies conditions and rates together.

RMG Insurance Solutions http://www.assitheque.com/RMG-Insurance-Solutions.html is working on an insurance policy targeting specifically this industry and that will cover most of the risks described above. The policy will be first distributed to UK residents but will cross quickly the UK channel to spread into the Continent and later to North America. The support of an international first class risk undertaker has been already secured and many potential insurance intermediaries have signalized interest to distribute the insurance product.

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