January 28, 2022
Dr. David G. Vequist IV
Director/Founder
Center for
Medical Tourism Research (CMTR)
Part of the Liza and Jack Lewis III Institute of the
Americas
One of the services the Center for Medical Tourism Research
(CMTR) has offered over the last decade has been contract research work with
countries (e.g. Korea and Colombia), NGOs (e.g. UN), regions, facilities, consulting
firms, and various healthcare stakeholders. Two of the more impactful projects
that the CMTR and its researchers have done was help the countries of Korea and
Colombia develop national strategies for the attraction of American medical travelers
to the respective nations. The work with Korea was completed in 2009 and the
consulting with Colombia was delivered to the ProExport department in 2014. In
both projects, tens of thousands of potential and former health tourists from
the US were surveyed to determine their demographics, preferences and experiences.
Then professors, students, and other personnel helped to develop specific
strategies for the government officials and healthcare providers to implement
in order to attract more international patients.
The staff at the CMTR determined to look back on these two projects
to how successful they were for the states in question. The following analysis
was run using the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) surveys of Balance of Trade
with foreign nations (using the Imports – purchases of services from other
countries) which includes Health Services data (found here).
Numbers from 1999 to 2019 (pre-pandemic) were released in July 10, 2020 (Note:
pandemic numbers from 2020 and on were not sought out because most traveled was
curtailed during this period). This data shows the amount of health travel that
was going to the countries pre-CMTR intervention and also post-CMTR
intervention. Analyzing the data gives an estimate of the approximate impact of
the CMTR research and consulting for these two nations (Note: in both cases,
the CMTR-led project was the only active project to help these countries
recruit more health tourists from the US).
The results show that research on medical tourism motives
and strategies developed based on sufficient samples sizes did appear to have a
positive impact. In the case of South Korea, the growth of American medical
travel to the nation, from 1999 up until 2009 (year of the CMTR project), was averaging
approximately 17.5% per year. After the research and strategy development, by
the CMTR, the growth of American medical tourism appeared to grow to almost 19%
per year and a total increase of about $140 thousand USD more to the health
providers of the country (over the ten year period). For Colombia the results
were even more striking. Colombia’s health travel industry appeared to grow
from 2006 (earliest data available from the BEA) to 2013 (year of the CMTR
project) by around 20.6% per year (before the research) and then increased to
over 29% per year after the CMTR-led project was implemented in 2014 (supported
by BEA from 2015 to 2019). This resulted in medical travel revenue increases
for the country of more than $15 million USD during the five (5) year period. The
total amount of value created by these two CMTR research projects was $15.2
million USD with a return-on-investment (ROI) of an incredible 10,774% (both
projects cost the country on average around $70,000 USD). In fact, both
countries combined easily received an average breakeven for the research
project within the first year. Results are seen in Table 1 and 2 below:
Table 1: Medical Tourism Before and After CMTR Research/Strategy
Intervention
Table 2: Medical Tourist Growth Increases Before and After CMTR Research/Strategy Intervention
In summary, even though many other factors could account for
part of the increases in medical travel to these countries including
demographic, regulatory, or behavioral trends in America and/or business,
regulatory, strategic (unrelated to the research) changes to these nations’
health tourism industry during this period- it appears that the CMTR research
intervention did have a positive effect on the fortunes of these countries. In
fact, when all countries in the BEA analysis are displayed by both Colombia and
Korea are one of the top eight (8) nations receiving medical tourists from the
US (see Figure 1 below [from May, 2021]; although all are behind Mexico which
is the leader in total market size). Therefore, it could be stated that investing
in research is likely to provide a positive ROI for medical tourism stakeholders.
Figure 1: Outbound Medical Tourism from the US (2010-2019)
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