Philippines : A Growing Medical Tourism Destination

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The Philippines has been growing as a destination for medical tourism. Procedures can be performed at a fraction of the amount that a patient would spend on the same procedure in the US or Europe. Philippine medical and nursing curricula are more challenging than in many in Southeast Asia, and many Filipino doctors have acquired their postgraduate or fellowship training from well-known institutions in the US, the UK and other developed countries.

Medical centers in Metro Manila have complied to ISO standards, and are periodically and regularly undergo accreditations from Philippine’s Department of Health. Others have already accredited by the American accreditation group Joint Commission International (JCI), while some have appied to join the UK-sourced Trent Accreditation Scheme.

Medical tourism (also called medical travel, health tourism, beauty tourism or global healthcare) is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care. Patients desiring plastic surgery who otherwise couldn’t afford it benefit from the significant cost savings and they can choose from the various life-enhancing cosmetic surgery procedures which are offered. It also includes tours to several destinations and Beauty Warehouse.

Such services typically include elective procedures as well as complex specialized surgeries such as joint replacement (knee/hip), cardiac surgery, dental surgery, and cosmetic surgeries. As a practical matter, providers and customers commonly use informal channels of communication-connection-contract, and in such cases this tends to mean less regulatory or legal oversight to assure quality and less formal recourse to reimbursement or redress, if needed.

Leisure aspects typically associated with travel and tourism may be included on such medical travel trips. Prospective medical tourism patients need to keep in mind the extra cost of travel and accommodations when deciding on treatment locations.

A specialized subset of medical tourism is reproductive tourism, which is the practice of traveling abroad to undergo in-vitro fertilization and other assisted reproductive technology treatments.