Jordan has recently become an attractive country for Yemeni patients seeking medical treatment. It has outmatched several countries that were popular with Yemeni patients including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India. Yemeni patients are now the largest national group of medical tourists at the top ten private and public hospitals in Jordan. Yemeni patients enjoy preferential treatment, with a discount of 20 percent of medical bills, the same discount offered to Jordanians.
The Jordanian minister of health, Dr. Naif Al-Faiz, emphasizes that the Jordanian government has placed medical tourism as a top priority, and has called upon the Hospital Directors’ Association to set specific mechanisms for the regulation of medical tourism under the ministry’s supervision and coordination. Jordan desires to provide fully integrated services, in terms of medical procedures, prices, and quality treatment. The country has succeeded in attracting patients from the USA, East Asia and Eastern Europe in the past few years. Jordanian medical treatment costs are not high if compared to the costs in other countries, such as Yemen, Sudan and Libya.Yemen will continue supporting medical tourism to Jordan. It will continue to send patients for treatment because of the high quality public and private medical services, said Yemeni deputy health minister Dr.Ghazi Ismail.
Promoting cohesion amongst different medical service providers and continuing in its efforts to promote medical tourism, the USAID Economic Development Program (Sabeq) invited Private Hospital Association (PHA) members and medical insurance companies to attend a focus group meeting at Sabeq premises, in a bid to protect patients' rights in cases of malpractice.
Promoting medical tourism in Jordan means responding to requirements of certain markets that demand practices that guarantee the rights of patients. As Jordan has no medical malpractice laws or history, no patient can sue a Jordanian hospital or doctor for malpractice. This may be a problem if a business or insurance company pays for treatment, although outside the USA, whether or not a hospital can be sued, seems of little importance to medical tourists; in some countries the very principle of malpractice or negligence does not exist in law.
Discussion lead to the Sabeq programme being asked to provide technical assistance to create a new insurance product for hospitals and to ensure the correct application of international standards in Jordan, to cater for the interests of both hospitals and insurance companies Neither medical malpractice insurance nor complying with international standards, are relevant in local law if the law does not recognize the concept of malpractice. Whether a Jordanian hospital could be successfully sued in an overseas court for malpractice will remain a theoretical question until it happens. The suggestion is that a combination of legal expenses insurance and compliance with international standards could be an effective first line of defence, in covering the costs and countering allegations that they are not as good as American hospitals, against opportunistic US lawyers seeking large settlements for allegations that Jordanian hospitals were guilty of medical negligence when treating an American medical tourist.
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