OBJECTIVES Medical tourism involves patients' intentional travel to privately obtain medical care in another country. Empirical evidence regarding health and safety risks facing medical tourists is limited. Consideration of this issue is dominated by speculation and lacks meaningful input from people with specific expertise in patient health and safety. We consulted with patient health and safe...

Tourism represents one of the most important industries in the global economy. Medical tourism is not a new phenomenon: mankind has traveled to foreign lands to access treatment for many years. Current research in information and communication technology considerably affects the tourism industry by providing innovative tools capable, on the one hand, of supporting tourists in organizing their h...

BACKGROUND Medical tourism is international travel with the intention of receiving medical care. Medical tourists travel for many reasons, including cost savings, limited domestic access to specific treatments, and interest in accessing unproven interventions. Medical tourism poses new health and safety risks to patients, including dangers associated with travel following surgery, difficulty as...

This study analysed medical record data from seven regional hospitals in Queensland to determine the types of medical conditions and injuries that resulted in overseas and interstate tourists being admitted to hospital. From a total of 135,128 admissions to the participating hospitals, 695 (0.51 per cent) were identified as overseas tourists and 3479 (2.57 per cent) were from interstate. The ma...

BACKGROUND Medical tourism is the term that describes patients' international travel with the intention of seeking medical treatment. Some medical tourists go abroad for orthopaedic surgeries, including hip and knee resurfacing and replacement. In this article we examine the findings of interviews with Canadian medical tourists who went abroad for such surgeries to determine what is distinctive...

BACKGROUND The medical tourism industry, which assists patients with accessing non-emergency medical care abroad, has grown rapidly in recent years. A lack of reliable data about medical tourism makes it difficult to create policy, health system, and public health responses to address the associated risks and shortcomings, such as spread of infectious diseases, associated with this industry. Th...

BACKGROUND Patients engage in medical tourism when they privately obtain a medical care abroad. Previous research shows that many medical tourists travel abroad with friends and family members who provide support and assistance. Meanwhile, very little is known about this important stakeholder group, referred to here as caregiver-companions. In this article we examine the challenges that can be ...