What does Medical Travel mean?

Medical Travel:

The term medical travel has been used very loosely in the literature. Although the term medical travel was originally used to describe the pilgrimages for curing recalcitrant diseases, it has been used often used to describe the travel for charity medical work or missionary medical work that was often undertaken in the under privileged areas.

The other terms for Medical Travel:

The medical travel is often used interchangeably with medical tourism, overseas medical, medical abroad, foreign medical treatment, surgery abroad and many more. In today's context, it simply means acquiring health care in a distant land.

The reasons for the medical travel are varied and are constantly evolving. The following might serve as an outline

Availability:

Some procedures and treatments may not be available in the patients home country. In some cases the treatments might not be approved by the medical authorities in the patient's home country. A good example is liberation surgery for multiple sclerosis in Canada. Further the long wait times in the countries like Canada also serves as an important factor.

Quality:

Many times the patients might not be satisfied with the existing quality in their home country. Then they generally seek out for the treatments in other countries. This used to be the trend in most of the developing countries like India in the past. Even today, some of the elite patients go to United States for their medical procedures.

Affordability:

The run away health care costs and increasing premiums have seen a spike in the number of un insured patients in countries like USA. There can not be a bigger motivator for the patients to get a break on the price . This is especially true for the patients when you see the 70-90% savings.
This has kick-started the