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Going to Thailand for Medical Tourism

ryan-frank | Aug 21, 2009 |

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Specialized medical procedures in the United States and in the Western world in General tend to be very, very expensive. That is why medical tourism, the practice of traveling abroad for the purposes of finding cheaper and often better specialized medical treatment, has become increasingly popular over the years. In Asia, Thailand is one of the top medical tourism destinations for westerners. Medical tourism is a rapidly growing segment of the Thai economy, and many of Thailand's biggest hospitals go to great lengths to attract medical tourists from abroad. A single Bangkok hospital received over 150,000 foreigners there on medical tourism in 2005. Medical tourism is estimated to have brought about 36.4 billion baht to Thailand in 2006.

Thailand's medical institutions provide a wide variety of medical procedures at drastically lower costs than the same procedures would have in western hospitals. Everything from dental work to organ transplants, as well as spa treatments and physical therapy clinics can be found there. To give an example of how much medical tourists save on some of their medical procedures, a coronary bypass surgery that can cost over $100,000 (USD) in the United States or Europe, will cost only $12,000 (USD) in a Thailand hospital. Thai hospitals and clinics tend to be a lot more comfortable and high-end, in terms of the level of nursing and patient care that they provide, especially when compared to the care that westerners are typically used to.

But Thailand medical tourism doesn't just cater to western medical tourists. Hospitals also dedicate a lot of effort and time into catering to wealthy Asian foreigners. One facility in Bangkok has a whole section just for its Japanese patients, and the interpreters employed by Phyathai Hospitals Group speak more than 22 languages, in addition to the English, which all their medical staff is required to know.

Thailand's physicians are usually very highly accredited and trained, many of them having gone to the U.S. and Europe to receive their degrees. Most of the doctors and medical staff at the Bumrungard International Hospital in Thailand, for example, were educated in the United States or Europe.