Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

Would You Like a Safari With Your Lasik Surgery? ● 77patients than the small providers (who are usually providers of traditionalmedicine or wellness services, such as massages and herbal treatments). Thisis not the case in nonmedical tourism, where the majority of tourists makeuse of small-scale providers (such as private home accommodations, smallprivate inns, nonchain restaurants and bars, local guide, and transportationservices, etc.). Also, the two differ with respect to the principal source oftheir investment capital. The hospitals and clinics that provide high-tech,state-of-the-art medicine for foreigners tend to be owned domesticallyand built with domestic investment resources, as the Chilean and Indianindustries attest. By contrast, the nonmedical tourist industry in developingcountries has attracted international capital, especially for large hotels andchains. With increased profitability, domestic funding is beginning to pourinto tourism.Components of Private Sector Supply of Medical TourismThe breadth and depth of private sector involvement in medical tourism isgrowing by leaps and bounds. The fastest growing components are physicalcapital, medical technology, and pharmaceuticals.Physical CapitalThe supply of invasive and diagnostic medical services requires the accumulationof physical capital such as hospitals and clinics. All LDCs thatpromote medical tourism have invested heavily in physical plants andequipment. By sheer number, India surpasses all developing countries. Since1983, the largest Indian corporations, including Fortis, Max, Tata,Wockhardt, Parimal, and Escorts, have all diversified into medical care,building hospitals and clinics across the country with high-end facilities forinternational patients (just Apollo Hospitals Enterprise has 37 hospitalfacilities where 60,000 patients were treated between 2001 and 2004 50 ).Similarly, Chile has also built numerous state-of-the-art clinics and hospitalsand has not neglected to invest in wellness facilities at its many thermalbath sites (30 are in operation, 100 more are potential sites). 51Contents of buildings are also part of physical capital. These includeprimarily medical equipment (MRIs, CAT scanners, ECG machines, ventilators,mammography equipment, and gamma knife machines), as wellas medical software (intellectual output of hospitals, such as research ofhospital staff). They also include beds and patient furniture (ApolloHospitals Enterprise offers private rooms that seem like expensive hotels,while Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai has private and deluxe roomswith hospital furnishings no different than in the West). 52