AMA meeting: Guidelines target safety of medical tourists

With patients increasingly considering overseas trips for care, new principles outline how they should be protected.

By Karen Caffarini, AMNews staff. July 7, 2008.

Chicago -- Acknowledging that lower costs are luring a growing number of patients abroad for medical treatment, the AMA's House of Delegates adopted nine new guiding principles at its Annual Meeting to ensure the safety of those medical tourists.

The principles -- which the AMA said were the first of their kind -- provide steps that the organization said should be considered by patients, employers, insurers and others when coordinating medical travel.

"Medical tourism is in its infancy, although it is growing very fast. It is still too early to determine whether the risks outweigh the advantages. We need to address this issue in its initial stage," said W.J. Terry, MD, a Mobile, Ala., urologist and member of the AMA Council on Medical Service.

In 2006, an estimated 150,000 Americans received medical care overseas, nearly half of which was for necessary surgeries, according to Josef Woodman, author of a book on medical tourism. Overseas procedures can cost 20% less than the price of the same procedure in the U.S. It also was pointed out in the council's report that a growing number of foreign hospitals and clinics are owned, managed or affiliated with American universities or health care systems, including the Cleveland and Mayo clinics.

The principles state that medical travel should be a choice, not a requirement, for patients and that patients need to be informed of the medical and legal risks of travel. The principles also state that financial incentives for medical travel should not restrict care given to patients, and be used only for facilities accredited by internationally recognized bodies such as the Joint Commission International or the International Society for Quality in Health Care.