How medical tourism costs NHS

Monday July 6th, 2015

UK residents who go abroad for cosmetic treatment cost the NHS £8 million a year to rectify the mistakes that were made, it has been claimed.

The Handbook on Medical Tourism and Patient Mobility highlights UK patients who travel abroad for medical treatment – particularly cosmetic procedures – who are at risk of developing complications or infections.

Researchers at the University of York and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who brought together a team of investigators from across the world for the book, say that medical tourism is a growing phenomenon that has been boosted by cheaper air travel and by the internet, which enables medical providers to market themselves to patients across the world.

Dr Neil Lunt, one of the editors, estimated that in 2015 globally five million people will seek medical treatment abroad.

“We have been aware of a growing international group of scholars who are interested in patients who travel out of country for treatment,” he said.

“What we wanted to do in this handbook was really to bring together all the scholars but also to focus on places and writers that are quite often neglected.

“Often the focus is on the US and Europe, but there’s important things going on around the world in Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America.”

The handbook examines the emergence of medical tourism and patient mobility and the implications this has for patients and health systems around the world, exploring issues such as risk, law and ethics; patient experience and treatment outcomes for cosmetic, transplantation, dental, fertility and weight loss surgery.

Although there have been a number of studies on UK patients who go abroad for procedures, more needs to be done to look at the potential impact and costs of medical tourism on the NHS.

“If someone decides to go oversees for cosmetic work, that’s an individual thing they do. But if when they come back there’s work that needs to be done, that typically gets picked up by the NHS,” says Dr Lunt.

“People are travelling abroad without necessarily understanding that if goes wrong they are not covered in the same way in terms of redress if they were treated by the NHS or treated privately in the UK. People are so used to just jumping on planes.”

Lunt, N., Horsfall, D. and Hanefeld, J. The Handbook on Medical Tourism and Patient Mobility. Publisher: Edward Elgar

Tags: NHS | Traveller Health | UK News | World Health

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