Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

100 ● Medical Tourism in Developing Countriesof medical tourism, they are then at an advantage over developing countriesthat do not.Quality and Quantity of Labor for Medical TourismAmerican and European companies claim that they get much of their hightechwork (such as radiology, heart and joint replacement surgery, as wellas pharmaceutical development) done in China and India because it can bedone better there. 16 Done better. That phrase has connotations pertaining toquality of the final output, which in turn has connotations pertaining tothe quality of the inputs. In medical tourism, labor is a crucial input, sothe vote of confidence given by American and European companies is basedon the high quality of labor in LDCs such as China and India.In order to supply medical tourist services, countries require both appropriatequality of labor as well as sufficient quantities of it. With respect toquality, there has been a clear transformation in the demands of the globaleconomy. Production processes in principal world economies use brainpowermore than manpower or horsepower, and their competitive advantagecomes from ideas, not things. It follows that characteristics of theworker that help develop brainpower have become important. Education,skills, and training, all embodied in a loose definition of human capital, arerelevant insofar as they determine the extent to which a worker is adaptableto new conditions, willing to think creatively, take risks, follow instructions,and respond to incentives. The particular skills demanded by the economychange in tandem with the changing demands of the economy. Indeed,while the need for low skilled workers was high during the early stages ofindustrialization, the demand for highly skilled workers is stronger today.With specific reference to medical tourism, highly specialized medical andbusiness skills are necessary.How do countries acquire human capital? They can train workers or theycan import them. Training takes time and its benefits are realized only witha lag. Technological change is so broad and rapid that it sometimes outstripsthe ability of a country’s educational system to keep up with its manpowerdemands. Alternatively, countries open their doors to skilled immigrants.As skilled workers will be skimmed off the top wherever they are in theworld, Peter Slater predicts that there will be more labor mobility in thetwenty-first century because of the revolution in information and communicationtechnologies that will need more and differently skilled workers inorder to sustain itself. 17However, simply amassing highly skilled human capital is not a sufficientcondition for developing medical tourism into a high-growth sector. The