A private eye clinic group in Cebu has its sights set on medical tourists as its next major market if the government will help medical tourism players promote the province as a healthcare destination. The Associated Cebu Eyes Specialists (ACES) eye referral clinics have treated some medical tourists but want to expand. ACES have two multi-subspecialty referral centres in Cebu City for complex and difficult eye cases - one at the Cebu (Velez) General Hospital and the other at the Perpetual Succour Hospital. A seven-member team of eye specialists runs these eye centres. ACES want to promote their services in Australia, Japan, and Korea but are cowed by the perceived amount of investment it would be involved. An ACES spokesperson reported said tapping foreign markets would be easier with government support. ACES doctors are willing to partner with travel and tourism agencies to accommodate more medical tourists. The group is one of the first to effectively challenge the politicians to stop talking about medical tourism, and give real support, financial and marketing, to make what so far has been mostly empty promises, a reality.

Scots travelling abroad for medical treatment must have "clarity and certainty" over what will be paid for by the NHS, health secretary Nicola Sturgeon said. Ms Sturgeon spoke at the Scottish Government launched a consultation on the issue of health tourism. The consultation is being carried out as the European Union seeks to clarify the rules surrounding the issue. As a devolved country within the UK, Scotland now rarely follows an identical path to that of England and Wales. New rights for Scottish patients to seek treatment abroad and claim the cost from the NHS are outlined in the consultation. The system, governed by a forthcoming probable European Directive, could mean patients who can access only a private dentist on their doorstep would save money by travelling to the Continent for dental work and then turning to the health service for reimbursement. Patients who face a particularly long wait for treatment in Scotland and people with second homes elsewhere in Europe are also likely to benefit from the proposals. The Scottish Government predicts an increase in the number of people interested in having their procedure abroad, and an increase in the number of foreigners wanting to use the Scottish NHS. A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: "We want to have as full as possible a Scottish consultation on this matter so that the interests of the Scottish NHS are taken into account when the new directive is drawn up." The current proposals state that patients could seek a refund only for treatment that is offered in their home country, so people would not obtain cancer drugs that are not available on the NHS by going abroad. In addition, the Scottish Government would not be expected to pay out any more than the procedure would have cost the NHS to perform. Although many Scottish health boards want to require patients to seek their permission before accessing treatment elsewhere in Europe, the method in the latest draft legislation - that is favoured by almost all EU countries - reduce delays and administrative red-tape by allowing patients to get treated first and get recompense afterwards. This method is in line with how healthcare already works in countries such as France. The British Medical Association is in favour of giving patients more power to access healthcare across the European Union but has warned other issues need to be addressed. Dr Terry John, chairman of the BMA’s international committee, said: "We would like to see much more work done on some of the practicalities - for example, who will interpret and translate medical notes? How will information be shared between doctors?"

Joint Commission International (JCI), a healthcare accreditation body that has given its stamp of approval to more than 200 hospitals in 27 countries, recently launched a quality and safety improvement framework aimed at helping healthcare organisations, government agencies and ministries of health worldwide to achieve new levels in quality patient care. Called the JCI International Essentials of Health Care Quality and Patient Safety, the framework is designed to help organisations focus on five risk areas that have the greatest impact on improving healthcare quality and patient safety. The five risk areas are:     Leadership Process and Accountability     Competent and Capable Workforce     Safe Environment for Staff and Patients     Clinical Care of Patients     Improving Quality and Safety The JCI Essentials provide clear and achievable risk reduction expectations. Levels of effort are identified for each criterion to provide a means for evaluating progress in reducing risk and improving quality. Increasingly, JCI has been asked to provide assistance to organisations and countries that are focusing on the foundational elements of quality and safety, which may eventually serve as a step toward national or international accreditation, said JCI chief executive Karen H Timmons. She explained: The Essentials methodology for improving quality and safety is an accumulation of the knowledge necessary to achieve the level of healthcare safety and quality that meets the needs of all stakeholders. JCI recognises that healthcare organisations around the world are called upon to provide high quality, safe patient care despite limited financial and human resources. The Essentials framework aims to help organisations focus on the safety risk areas that will have the highest impact on patient safety. The mission of JCI is to improve the quality and safety of health care globally, and by offering the Essentials framework, we are now able to more efficiently assist healthcare organisations to higher quality care. JCI Essential received ISQua endorsement in early in 2008. ISQua, or the International Society for Quality in Health Care, is a non-profit, independent organisation with members in over 70 countries. ISQua works to provide services to guide health professionals, providers, researchers, agencies, policy makers and consumers, to achieve excellence in healthcare delivery to all people, and to continuously improve the quality and safety of care. While JCI is the numerical market leader in individual hospital accreditation, it has seen all four of its main rivals get involved with countries on country wide accreditations. Essentials is a tool to get more lucrative country based business. As part of the Essentials program launch, Mexico is the first country to demonstrate this product to other countries internationally.

The KIMS Bahrain Medical Centre (KBMC) recently received accreditation by the Australian Council for Health Care Standards International (ACHSI). It is the first medical centre in the Gulf to achieve such recognition. The ACHSI accreditation comes at a right time as KBMC expects that iinternational accreditation will soon be made compulsory for all healthcare institutions in GCC countries. The UAE government has already announced that international accreditation mandatory for all its healthcare facilities by 2010. Bahrain has seen a growth of private health facilities with 13 hospitals, and a number of private industrial companies have their own in-house clinics providing primary care to their employees. One driver is the increasing expatriate population that is expected to reach 500,000 next year. KBMC opened in the Gulf kingdom in June 2004 as a multi-specialty medical centre offering outpatient and diagnostic services. Assessing the centre’s current growth, hospital management believes that there exists sufficient potential to start a 60-bed hospital in a strategic location in Manama in 2009. KBMS is a branch of the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), a leading 450-bed private hospital located in Thiruvananthapuram, India. In 2006, KIMS became the first hospital in India to get the council’s accreditation. The KIMS group is in the process of opening new medical centres and hospitals in all the Gulf countries.

Treatment Abroad, the leading medical tourism portal in the UK, has launched a new website solely dedicated to medical tourism to India. Called Treatment in India, the portal will promote India’s growing reputation as a world-class provider of medical treatment. People mulling over a medical travel to the country will be able to research online the treatment and facility options in India. They can make informed decisions about the credentials of its medical facilities and doctors based on up-to-date information about surgeons, hospitals and medical tourism specialists in the country. With India’s high profile in medical tourism, there is too much scattered information on the web.  A simple Google search about medical travel in India produced 490,000 results from reputable agencies and hospitals to less reputable agencies promoting only one clinic with dubious qualifications. Treatment In India aims to cut through this confusion with a trusted existing brand. Philip Archbold of Treatment Abroad said: We know from the success of our other websites that country-focused sites are effective ways for medical providers to market themselves to medical tourists.  Additionally, medical tourists value the information provided on the sites as they know and trust that the Treatment Abroad brand will give them relevant and reliable information to help them make informed decisions when choosing to travel abroad for medical treatment. Intuition Communication, which publishes the main Treatment Abroad website, already runs a number of country-focused websites such as Treatment in Spain, Treatment in Cyprus and Treatment in Hungary. Treatment In India will constantly update information about local facilities, costs, medical information and health news, giving visitors answers to the questions that need to be taken into consideration when planning medical treatment abroad. The portal already links to the websites of medical travel agencies from the UK, the US and India. It also links to leading hospital group Fortis Healthcare among others.

The daily number of inbound tourists from mainland China is now more than 600. Wu Chao-yen, chief secretary of the Tourism Bureau, said that simplifying visa-issuing procedures, works. Simplifying the procedures for mainland Chinese to visit Taiwan for medical tourism reasons is expected to be as successful. The first batch of medical tourism groups from mainland China arrived in Taiwan at the end of September. US medical-travel agency Companion Global Healthcare has added Min-Sheng General Hospital in Taiwan to its network of international hospitals that offer surgery and other care to American patients at affordable rates. Min-Sheng is a state-of-the-art, 600-bed hospital.

Some sections of the American press are predicting gloom and doom for the Asian medical tourism industry. But their main gripe seems to be that it is going to grow less slowly than earlier predictions suggested. With US insurers, banks, car makers and others having to go to their government for hand outs which are often bigger than the entire medical budget of a small country, and thousands of Americans worried about losing their jobs and homes, suggesting medical tourism is in crisis because it is only growing slowly is patently absurd. So what are they basing these figures on? A handful of random quotes from hospitals and agencies seem to be the main source. A few hospitals are admitting that they will have lower growth in 2009 then expected. The ones being worst affected are those relying very heavily on American business. Bumrungrad International in Bangkok expects lower growth in 2009, but how much of this is due to recession and the cost of travel from the US to Thailand, and how much of it is the result of political unrest in the country, is unclear. Asian countries such as Singapore, Thailand and India, which have attracted huge numbers of Americans, are now lowering their expectations. Just a few months ago, they had been anticipating rapid expansion, but the often-quoted prediction of 6 million Americans by 2010 is pure myth. India often claims to attract one or two million medical tourists a year. Although many hospitals and agencies have built business plans on this, there is no proof that even one million overseas patients have visited the country in one year. The Indian Healthcare Federation and the Confederation of Indian Industry estimate that the country has the potential to attract 1 million tourists per annum, but potential and actual are far different. Recently, one of the leading Indian hospital groups, that is heavily involved in the sector, made a responsible estimate that India would see 450,000 visitors in 2008. The next source of the gloom is from medical tourism agencies. In the last few years, hundreds of start-up companies in the US hoping to serve the needs of medical tourists have sprung up. The goal was to develop a niche for themselves by handling all the logistics for Americans travelling abroad for medical care. Many have no experience or even any medical background. Most have been wildly optimistic over the number of individuals and businesses that will pay for overseas treatment. The 300 US-based agencies are competing with over 500 overseas agencies targeting Americans. Quite simply, there is not enough business to keep all of them afloat, and many will perish. But the good professional ones will prosper. Those counting on large numbers of Americans are especially at risk. And the final source of the predictions of doom and gloom? None other than those institutions with the worst possible recent record of financial forecasting, stockbrokers and investment bankers!

The Korean wave has put a growing number of beautiful Korean actresses in the global spotlight. Not only has this led to a surge in cinema box-office sales, but also a newfound foreign interest in Korea’s booming cosmetic surgery industry. According to a survey of 50 Chinese travel industry experts by the Seoul Tourism and Marketing Corporation, 65 percent recommended that Korea use plastic surgery or skincare treatments to lure more medical tourists. Tapping into the rising interest, the Seoul city government plans to market tours offering medical treatments. The packages, called "Seoul Beauty Tours," aim to boost tourism revenues by offering Korea’s finest cosmetic medical services.

Sime Darby Bhd is gearing to grow its healthcare business with the launch of its new business unit Sime Darby Healthcare (SDH). The launch of SDH means that the group’s existing healthcare facilities Subang Jaya Medical Centre (SJMC) and Megah Medical Specialists Group are now formally integrated under the SDH brand. SDH chairman Tan Sri Wan Zahid Noordin describes the business strategy as twofold to focus on growing specialist treatment in Malaysia and leveraging Sime Darby’s international presence to grow internationally; We want to be known as a boutique treatment centre because we can do the high-end stuff. That requires a lot of expertise, which we have, and we also have the equipment. Those are the things that we can do and that’s our niche. SDH is keen to expand and will use Sime Darby’s presence in other countries to gain a foothold overseas: We are looking at emerging markets like China. Our strategy is not intended to be competitive in nature. It is more organic in the sense that we want to build a very strong foundation of quality. We want to develop the capability and the expertise of our doctors, nursing staff and management. We are also taking pains to get international accreditation because we do not want to only operate within the country but we want to go overseas. We are in the midst of securing international accreditation from JCI for both Malaysia hospitals should be in place very soon. Meanwhile, Penang International Dental College (PIDC) is keen on venturing into dental tourism in early 2009. Chief executive Dr S. Sharavanan said the college had necessary expertise in the field through its parent institution, the Vinayaka Mission’s University (VMU) in India. We have plans to start a separate private dental clinic facility to promote medical tourism. We will allocate space for this purpose and obtain necessary approval from the Health Ministry, Dr Sharavanan said. VMU has a dedicated hospital for medical tourism, drawing patients from all over the world. PIDC will initially target patients from Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei.

Sudan is the largest country in Africa but as yet has no involvement in medical tourism. While cost-comparative medical treatment is the high-profile end of the business, there is a view that alternative health and wellness tourism has a better long-term future. Sudan’s Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife intends to cash in on an indigenous knowledge that uses a pool of centuries-old sulphuric water to treat skin diseases, rheumatism and female ailments. The ministry has already prepared an investment plan for rooms, restaurants and sulphuric water baths. The fountains for the baths are at Okasha village, in the Northern State in Wade-Halfa locality.   This is just one of the expanded moves to tap into indigenous knowledge in the region. In Jordan, the first Arab country to enter medical travel, tourists from all world and other Arab countries visit the health resorts there including sulphuric waterfalls.

Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian City, a 400-bed rehabilitation hospital and medical centre, has achieved JCI status. Located just north of Riyadh in the Banban area, it provides therapeutic, supportive and other services which are designed to assist in restoring health following acute illnesses. Opened in 2002, it is funded by the Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Foundation. The hospital offers specialised, comprehensive care to patients with physical, congenital and perceptual disabilities. This 200,000 sqm facility includes a 240-bed medical rehabilitation centre, a recovery centre focusing on mature adults and the elderly, an ambulatory services centre, and a child development centre focused on children up to the age of ten years old. A hospital that already has JCI status (awarded in 2006), The Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital (DSFH) in Jeddah, has achieved international accreditation from The Australian Council of Healthcare Standards International (ACHSI). Dr Soliman Fakeeh Hospital is a leading referral hospital, established in 1978 by Dr Soliman Fakeeh. It is considered to be among the top ten in the world for in-vitro fertilisation procedures.

Although the economic recession is slowing down the number of people buying cosmetic surgery, the reduction is much less than in the US where a 50 percent or more drop in business has been reported. The cost of cosmetic surgery and dental work in the country is about a third of what it would be in the United States and the quality is as good. Costa Rica has a positive image, strong healthcare infrastructure and proximity so potential patients and companies are taking an interest in Costa Rica, said Bill Cook, international patient coordinator at Hospital Clínica Bíblica in San José. Clínica Bíblica has been attracting medical tourists since the mid-1990s, but the number of foreign patients has tripled in the last year to about 30 per month. According to the Costa Rican Tourism Board, 95 percent of the estimated medical tourists who come to Costa Rica each year are from the US. The majority are uninsured or underinsured. Medical treatment is not only less expensive than in the US, but it is often less expensive than the deductible insured patients would pay for the same treatment at home. Labour costs are so different here. Healthcare prices are 30 to 40 percent lower than in the US, noted Carole Veloso, director of the Hospital CIMA in San Jose. Meanwhile, Hospital Católica, which is also located in San José, is putting the finishing touches on a new wing called Hospital Hotel La Católica to accommodate the growth in medical tourism. To develop and promote medical tourism, Costa Rican hospitals, doctors and government agencies have formed the Council of International Promotion of Costa Rica Medicine (PROMED), which is about to be launched. Its president, Dr Jorge Cortes, said PROMED will also organise and establish quality standards for the industry. In another development, 20 doctors have formed Costa Rican Medical Holding, the country’s first medical tourism consortium. The group will promote its services primarily in the US, where it also hopes to cultivate working relationships with insurance companies. This group of health professionals has been working together for over two years. By formalising links, these doctors seek to actively participate in health fairs, commercial missions and promotions initiated by Costa Rica’s Foreign Trade Corporation. All the doctors work in Costa Rica’s three major private hospitals; Hospital Hotel La Catolica, Cima San Jose and Hospital Clinica Biblica. The group seek to coordinate its promotion with local transportation and tour operator companies as well as with several specialised recovering homes. They will also contact specialised travel agents in the US to promote their services. Meanwhile, clients of South Carolina-based dental travel company Companion Global Dental now have a third option in San Jose, Costa Rica, for obtaining dental care at a fraction of the US cost. Companion has added Adult Dentistry of Costa Rica to its network of dental clinics. Led by Dr   Mario Garita, the clinic specialises in implant dentistry joins CGD-affiliated Prisma Dental Clinic and Meza Dental Care, both based in San Jose.