Demand for medical tourism

On the demand side of medical tourism one can find patients who suffer from chronic diseases, or those who want to have their pain relieved; simply, those people who are in need of some kind of medical treatment.  It is mainly the medical effects of some natural resources and the therapies that these people expect the improvement of their health conditions, while, at the same time, they also use other tourism services.  In Hungary the treatments are often prescribed by physicians and they are partially or fully financed by the national health insurance. Although the share of self-financed treatments is growing. It is also typical of medical tourism that the people concerned primarily consider themselves patients and in their opinion they do not qualify as tourists. (Hojcska Á.– Szabó Z. 2010).

Primarily it is the group of the elderly who use the services of traditional spas. Compared with other social groups they have less money to spend on wellness services and the services offered to them are often subsidized by the state or some state or private insurance company. In spite of these features specific spending on hotels in Hungary has increased by over 1.5%. (Bodnár L. 2000).

In the market of medical tourism the development of the so-called clinical, or, with other words, healing or health tourism services have gained impetus. These services – so as to distinguish them from those which are built on the use of natural resources – primarily use high-tech-based medical services and treatments. Examples include dental treatments, laser procedures, cardiological treatments and plastic surgery. These procedures may be complemented by other alternative and therapeutical treatments. 

In clinical tourism there are in-patients and outpatients as well, but they can only be considered health tourists in case they also spend money on tourism services. This form of tourism originally gained significance in Hungary’s border zone areas, which are easily accessible, and the prices of health care services are cheaper than in the patients’ home countries. Patients primarily came to use the services offered by Hungarian dentists, occulists and plastic surgeons.

In addition to the traditional Austrian patients today there are patients from more distant countries as well, including Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom. EU regulations as of 2004 have made it possible for EU citizens to use health care services in EU countries other than their home country in urgent cases and if care cannot be provided to them in their own country within a reasonable period of time. In order to grant the basic principle of the ’free movement of services’, the EU regulations concerning patient mobility permit the choice of cross-border health care institutions, that is, it allows people to use services other than emergency services in other countries. (Kincses et al.  2009, p. 33).

There is a growth of demand for health care worldwide if health insurance in the given country is based on business principles (e.g. U.S.A.) This is why insurance companies themselves are interested in purchasing cheaper services abroad. The situation, when the patient does only have a partial health insurance, or does not have an insurance at all, would also generate patient mobility. Today the number of Americans who travel abroad to have medical treatments or be operated on, exceeds 10 million annually. (There are about 45 million people who have no insurance and there are further millions underinsured.) „These people are better-off if they pay for occasional health care services abroad themselves than paying the high insurance fee regularly in their home country’. (Kincses et al. 2009, p. 36.)”. Their target countries include Italy, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. (aerzteblatt.de). Annually about 150,000 American patients are treated in India only.  

Clinical tourism is such a sub-category of tourism which generates higher- than- average income. It is due to the fact that ’clinical tourists’ spend more time at their destination than average tourists. By recent statistical figures instead of the average 3.7 nights, ’clinical tourists’ spend an average of 13 nights at their destination.. When assessing the annual distribution of tourists it can be stated that there are no drastic seasonal differences, albeit some growth of demand can be seen in the spring and fall seasons.