Why The Fuss Over Medical Tourism – the term

Medical Tourism - the buzzword that opens the door to search for all types of medical travel

The phrase began as a buzzword coined by travel agents to describe combining a vacation with a light medical procedure – resulting in such significant savings that you could cover the cost of your entire vacation.

Dental tourism is a good example of the use of medical tourism.  Dental tourism is still the “toe in water” experience for a person’s first medical traveler trip across a border to shave several thousand dollars off the “parts list” they get from their local dentist. 

I think it’s fair to say it’s ”sticker shock” that first motivates people to take an interest in medical travel.

Dental Towns like Algodones, Mexico, have grown up to serve this “medical vacation” need.  You’ll find hundreds of seniors and people of all ages, Europeans, Canadians and Americans all walking the streets and visiting with locals in between dental appointments and visits to the pharmacies and eye glass doctors.

By contrast, this is not the same reason why a medical traveller would go to Tijuana – but then Tijuana has a different offering, as the article on “For heart surgery, head for the border?” published 7/19 on Marketplace.

And hence the “fuss” over the term Medical Tourism being used to loosely describe the wider scope of medical travel, for example major surgery.

Is it Medical Tourism, Medical Vacation, Medical Travel, Surgical Travel or Health Travel?

Obviously, heart surgery is no vacation and therefore the term Medical Tourism would not apply.

Now that medical travel for more serious reasons is becoming better known, the monitor of “tourism” doesn’t fit the bill.  But because people search for the phrase, it has become the “key phrase” portal to learning how to find the resources to build your own personal network of medical resources worldwide.

Doctors, particularly, don’t use the term “tourism” to describe traveling for surgical procedures.  Tourism has nothing to do with it.  Surgeons prefer the more accurate terms of medical travel.

And the mental picture of “medical tourism” does cause some people to think that they can fly off to another country, say for a facelift, and expect to hop out of bed and go touring the country.   Here’s a tip.  If you plan to do that, at least take the “vacation” part first because you’re not going to feel like going out in public afterwards.

That early concept of a medical vacation has evolved as we come to terms with the fact that it is “OK” to source medical treatment from different corners of our global village world.  The era of global healthcare resource sharing has arrived.

Travel-for-treatment is EVERYONE’s domain, and the Internet has removed all barriers to healthcare information.  Read up on The Many Faces of Medical Tourism.

Learn all the reasons people travel for medical and wellness reasons.  We encourage you to take this survey to test your knowledge of medical tourism.