Patient mobility in the global marketplace: a multidisciplinary perspective

Abstract

There is a growing global market in healthcare and patients. And while there is a small body of evidence emerging around this phenomenon commonly known as medical tourism there remain significant unanswered policy and research questions which need to be addressed. We outline some of the key issues set against the six key disciplinary preoccupations of the journal: epidemiology, health economics, health policy ethics, politics of health, health management, and health policy.

Combating the threat of stem cell tourism through patient education and government regulation

“…[1][2][3][4] The diversity of reasons why patients travel for treatment include: access to care unavailable in homestates, financial incentives, impacts related to health-care privatization, perceptions related to quality of care and others. 5,6 A network-based study of the push and pull of medical travel shows that the role of networks is critical to understand choice of treatment, provider, and destination. Importantly, the choice of destination and provider appears to be largely the result of informal networks (web fora, personal recommendations, and support groups), although distance, costs, expertise, and availability of treatment all are factors influencing patients' decision to travel.…”

“…5 Reliable data are scarce on the number of persons traveling abroad to receive health care. 6,7 Estimates included in a US Centers for Disease Control report suggest that 60,000-750,000 Americans travel annually, 8 while other sources suggest that upward of …”

Patient Cross-Border Mobility: New Findings and Implications in Spanish Regions

“…Then, mobility would happen if and only if the net benefit from going to the other region is higher than the net loss of consuming a quality level different from the desired in the residential one. In this sense, several studies have analysed patient migration (Levaggi and Zanola, 2004;Fabrri and Rabone, 2010;Baker et al, 2014;Balia et al, 2014;Lunt and Mannion, 2014;Brekke et al, 2015) although major challenges remain, such as to delimitate the international state-of-theart concerning patient mobility across European member states (Frischhut and Levaggi, 2015). For example, evidence about patient mobility phenomenon exists within the National Health Service in the United Kingdom (Exworthy and Peckham, 2006) and also in the Italian decentralized health service (Brenna and Spandonaro, 2015).…”

“…This increasing finding has been studied under different looks -flow size, conflicting effects, income and health, time periods, internal domestic regulations, reciprocity connections between countries, patient profiles or demographic and equity issues -but applied research on this topic is still needed (Roghman and Zastowny, 1979;Congdon, 2001;Lowe and Sen, 2006;Glinos et al, 2010;Migge and Gilmartin, 2011;Glinos et al, 2012;Lunt et al, 2013;De Mello-Sampayo, 2014;Lunt and Mannion, 2014). Although these issues are relevant, go beyond the scope of our study which is going to be based on the well-known determinants of patients' cross-border mobility or induction effects at the regional level.…”

An Application of the Short-Term Forecasting with Limited Data in the Healthcare Traveling Industry

“…In addition, from the viewpoint of patients, seeking the advanced medical surgeries in foreign nations is also a main factor for healthcare traveling. As a result, there is a phenomenon of patient movement from developed countries to less developed countries, so that they can receive a high medical standard of healthcare, treatment, or beauty services through traveling [3]. In fact, the demand for out-of-pocket healthcare and medical services abroad is increasing around the world.…”