Medical tourism

I mean, About 60% of my patients, they are from out of country and out of state.

So I'm part of medical tourism and that has really boomed since COVID.

It wasn't the case before, at least in America, but More patients now have realized that, hey, if I want to get something done, I don't want to be demographically limited to who I want to see.

I want to look the one that I feel is the best for what I want, and I'm willing to travel.

Here we go.

Okay, so you must answer questions about medical tourism all the time.

How do you usually start explaining things to people?

So for me, when I'm talking about medical tourism, I'm talking about a patient self-initiating the decision to go abroad for privately funded medical care in another country.

I'm Valorie Crooks.

I'm a professor at Simon Fraser University, where I'm also the Associate Vice President at Research.

But in my own research as a health geographer for more than a decade now, I've been looking at equity and ethical issues related to medical tourism, all kinds of complicated questions with a lot of work being done in the Caribbean region.

But also this work has taken me to a number of countries in Mongolia, Colombia, South Korea, a really diverse grouping of countries that are involved in medical tourism

That is the type of experience this part of the business is aiming for.

There is another thread in the agency's story that I find fascinating from a niche point of view, and that is medical tourism.

Lux Sule presents travel packages that combine a stay in Italy with care provided by clinics, and the site lists one-week and two-week packages built around a hair transplant, with the agency stating that travelers can save significantly compared with prices in the United States.

It also showcases longevity testing packages, including a program called Eleia, and writes about wellness topics on its blog.

Medical.

Medical tourism.

Yeah.

This is big.

Medical tourism, because of the cost and the long waits to be getting procedures like knee surgery or things like that, a lot of people have been turning to other countries, and a lot of countries have tried to make this into a business for them.

So it used to be Cuba.

Cuba, obviously, no longer, but countries like India, Thailand, Mexico.

So transportation, hotels, I mean w- everything is, is worked out.

It's very white glove treatment because it's really medical tourism at, at its base, right? That's really what we do is medical tourism.

And so we believe we have a, a group of, of specialists and people that are, um, some of the best in the world at what they do, and, and we can help people through those, through those issues.

But we deal with that issue all the time.

So we all went through this, this testing, and, and a couple things I wanna touch on.

So medical tourism, I just wanna give people what this is.

So it's actually becoming m-far more popular worldwide.

It's a multi-billion dollar and grow-growing, growing global industry.

And, and you know, I've talked to, to people that are locally about it and, you know, because of the significant wait times and all those issues that I mentioned, they started to say, "You know what? $13,000 might be something that's doable."

Mm.

And there's finance companies for medical tourism that we've spoke of that will finance your trip out of country.

It, it doesn't have to be Poland, it can be Mexico, and that makes it then more palpable.