ROMANIA: Medical Insight launches website for health travel outside Romania

Medical services consulting company, Medical Insight, has launched healthtravel.ro, the first Romanian site containing information about foreign hospitals. The website targets those who want to travel from Romania for medical services and capitalizes on a developing trend on the Romanian market. Many Romanian patients ? including Romanian president Traian Basescu ? have chosen hospitals outside the country for major health interventions. Medical Insight, founded in 2010, is a company that offers consultancy to those who are looking for medical services in foreign countries.

Adriana Sarbu of Medical Insight says, “If in the past people used to go to Austria or Germany for treatment, now, according to our research, a lot of Romanians prefer Turkey for medical controls and interventions. This is a growing thing, considering that the quality of service is very high and that the prices are comparable to the ones in Romania and lower than those from the Western European countries.”

The site contains information about treatments, medical specialties and the country providing treatment, along with detailed presentations of hospitals based on the held certifications, reports of independent institutions and former patients reviews. The site also helps people who want information about health insurance or funding opportunities for treatments.

Romanian hospitals might be classified into five categories of competence from May this year, if the Romanian Health Ministry’s project is approved. The project contains the methodology for classifying hospitals, depending on jurisdiction and minimum mandatory criteria for hospitals classification in new categories. This should ensure efficiency by avoiding overlap and duplication between hospital units, ensuring equitable access to health services for citizens and lower treatment costs. Moreover, the classification based on this methodology will be used to establish protocols for transferring uncritical cases between hospitals. It will also play a key role in developing proposals for additional funding to hospitals and good planning, as well as procurement of medical equipment.

Private healthcare services operator Centrul Medical Unirea (CMU), the second largest clinic group in Romania, bought Euroclinc with a hospital and three clinics. CMU runs four hospitals in Bucharest, a hospital in Brasov and 20 clinics. It also owns half of the stem cell bank Stem ? Health Unirea in Bucharest. The company took over Euroclinic hospital and clinics from Eureko in September 2010. CMU is majority owned by investment fund Advent, and the rest of the shares are owned by founder Wargha Enayati.Despite such investment, the provision of health services in the country is still poor, which is why many people seek treatment elsewhere.

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PHILIPPINES Medical tourism development in the Philippines

An integrated medication tourism zone is planned in Nasugbu, Batangas, with completion due by November 2012. Local company Global Village Mobile Network Corp (GVMNC) has been approved by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) as a new ecozone medical tourism enterprise. GVMNC facilities will occupy a 24-hectare portion of the 52-hectare medical tourism park being developed by local group Camp David Investment and Holdings (CDIHI). PEZA has also approved CDIHI as a new medical tourism park developer subject to a presidential proclamation. CDIHI has allocated P318 million for the development of the park.

Facilities within the medical tourism park include a tertiary hospital that is designed to accommodate 100-bed in-patient suites, 8-bed intensive care units, 8-bed cardiac care units, 10-bed hemodialysis unit, 8-bed day care surgery unit, 3 fully functional operating rooms, a cardiac catheterization laboratory and a lithotripsy unit. A five-star hotel will accommodate visiting relatives and patients. The development also includes clustered home facilities for the elderly with long term medical care requirements. These are designed to provide programmed long-term care to 1152 residents, some locals but mainly Japanese retirees, with on-line telemedicine facilities. Other facilities in the park include healthcare, wellness and cosmetic surgery and spa; condominium administrative housing, country club complex, pavilion complex and satellite network hub facility.

The Cebu Health and Wellness Council (CHWC) is upbeat about Cebu’s potential in medical tourism. The group is seeing an increasing number of medical travelers in the province. It seeks to use the country’s growing expatriate Filipino workers, balikbayans, as envoys to promote medical tourism where they work.

CHWC is a private-public sector coalition developing and promoting the health and wellness industry in Cebu. It includes hospitals, doctors, dentists, spas, hotels, travel agents, tour operators and government departments.

The aim is to position Cebu as a premier health and wellness destination in Asia by attracting foreign patients through testimonies and first-hand experiences of balikbayans of local medical and wellness services. The Department of Tourism-Cebu wants to attract Filipinos around the world to come back home for health and wellness services and become ambassadors for the sector. So international Filipino communities with foreign friends would share by word-of-mouth their personal experiences of local health and wellness therapies. CHWC member-organizations are conducting talks with several Filipino communities abroad who could help bring in Filipino patients. Cebu also wants to attract Americans and Europeans seeking medical services and wellness vacation packages. The Philippines wants to catch up with rivals Thailand, India, Singapore and Malaysia.

This year’s Beauty, Health and Wellness Show will showcase the Cebu health and wellness industry. The BHW Show 2009 will take place on November 4-8, at the Ayala Center in Cebu. Organisers hope to better last year’s 47 exhibitors by targeting beauty salons, beauty clinics, hotel spas and day spas, fitness studios and gyms and health foods and restaurants. The show has changed from a trade show into a wellness event, and will feature dental and medical tourism forums.

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ISRAEL: Medical tourism increasing in Israel

Many countries welcome expansion in medical tourism, but the boom in Israel’s medical tourism has been attacked by a government official, the State Comptroller, in his annual report on healthcare; Joseph Shapira told Parliament, ”The booming industry luring foreigners to Israel for medical procedures infringes on the principle of equality in the provision of health services”.

According to the Health Ministry, revenue from medical tourism in state hospitals was NIS 54 million in 2009. But by 2011, it was 2.2 times higher, at NIS 119 million.

Medical tourism to Israel is also growing for private hospitals and is expected to increase more in the future. Future tourism and medical tourism will be easier after Israel's government approved an "Open Skies" deal to allow more EU flights, lower air travel prices and increase competition after April 2014.Tourism is a major industry in Israel, bringing in more than 3.5 million visitors a year.

The Health Ministry both owns and runs state hospitals, as well as supervising healthcare nationwide. There is an increase in private healthcare in public hospitals; while the ministry is helping private interests build and run a public hospital with private medical care in Ashdod. There is also an increase in private healthcare, with politicians and economists divided as to whether or not an increase in privatisation of state healthcare is good or bad for the public.

In the 2012 annual report, the comptroller notes that the ministry has very little data on what and how many services ? mostly elective surgery ? are provided by the 11 private hospitals around the country,” The rate of activity of the private system cannot be compared with the public system. Going to a private hospital for surgery enables patients to choose their own surgeon ? usually doctors who work mornings in the public hospitals and moonlight in the afternoons and evenings. There was a 22% rise in private hospital activity between 2005 and 2010 compared to only 14% growth in public hospitals during that period. The time may have come to prohibit patients in private hospitals from being able to choose their surgeon or consultant.”

Medical tourism and whether treating foreigners in public and private hospitals comes at the expense of Israelis is a vital issue raised in the report. The shifting of dwindling numbers of medical personnel to the care of outsiders may also harm the Israeli public, but the ministry has not examined the problem and set down rules. The ministry says that it is now doing so.

The government has often said it will regulate medical tourism, but the latest report and replies in Parliament suggest that new rules and regulations will be devised, but it could take a few years.

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FINLAND: Medical tourism from Russia to Finland is growing

For many years medical travellers have gone to private Finnish clinics for treatment and now public hospitals want to attract Russian business. Almost all business comes from Russia, with a smattering from other European countries.

Most private clinics with specialist skills that attract foreign customers to Finland are in Helsinki. The number of foreign customers is not known, but many private clinics in the Finnish capital each receive hundreds of patients from abroad each year. People go for cosmetic surgery, surgery, fertility treatment and cancer care.

The Lauttasaari clinic of Suomen Terveystalo, Finland's biggest private clinic and hospital chain, receives hundreds of foreign clients every year. They go for varicose veins treatments and laser surgery, which is used to remove wrinkles and tattoos: advanced hair transplant techniques.

Some foreigners go to Finland to receive fertility treatments. At Felicitas Clinic, one out of ten clients come from abroad. Some come from Norway where the laws on donor egg treatments are stricter than in Finland.

Publicly funded hospitals in Finland are showing interest in caring for health tourists coming from Russia. Many hospitals are considering different ways of getting Russian citizens to travel across the border for medical care in Finland. Among measures under consideration to make it easier for foreign customers to find medical care in Finland is the establishment of a patient agency to organise travel for both patients and their accompanying family members or friends.
Some public hospitals do attract paying private patients from overseas. Coxa, a hospital specialising in joint replacements in Tampere, gets under 100 foreign patients a year; while 30 to 50 Russian women give birth at the Kymenlaakso Central Hospital in Kotka.

At the private cancer centre, the Docrates Hospital in Helsinki, one in five patients are from abroad. Most of the 300 to 400 patients are Russian. In addition to the actual treatments, the customer service includes post-op hotel accommodation. If needed, a nurse can visit the patient to administer medication, until the patient is ready to return home. Some of the clinic’s patients receive treatment a couple of times a month and they will stay in Finland for a few days at a time. The clinic sees its greatest potential for growth abroad. Language skills are given a priority when hiring staff.

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