Agents Will Play Key Role In Medical Tourism
Travel agents will play a significant role in the development of the emerging medical tourism industry in the Cayman Islands, and throughout the world.
“Medical tourism can not grow without the active participation by the travel agents,” Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty told Travel Market Report in an e-mail from his headquarters in the Narayana Hrudayalaya Bangalore medical facility, Bangalore, India. He is chairman of the facility.
Shetty’s perspective on the critical role of travel agents in developing the medical tourism industry is significant, as he is opening a medical travel facility in the Cayman Islands that will serve patients traveling from the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean. (Caymans’ Tourism Industry Backs Medical Tourism Initiative).
“We definitely will be tying up with travel agents in this region” to get the message out about the medical travel treatments available in the Caymans and “for organizing the travel plans for our patients,” he wrote.
Great Expectations
Currently a $20 billion market, medical tourism could reach $100 billion by 2012 according to recent studies, said Anne Marie Moebes, executive vice president of Well-Being Travel, the Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based company launched in July to facilitate travel agent involvement in the medical tourism market.
“The time is right for the medical and travel industries to work together to provide consumers with a consulting service that expertly manages all of their medical travel needs around the world from one source,” said Moebes. “The market opportunity is tremendous, and now is the time to tap this trend.”
Moebes added that opportunities are compelling for both leisure and corporate agencies, particularly as companies increasingly offer employee health benefits that provide incentives to travel in relation to their medical treatments, she said. For example, an employee could undergo a medical procedure in New York to the tune of $8,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, or have the same procedure done at an accredited facility in Costa Rica at just a fraction of the cost, stay in a beautiful location with a companion for a week, and maybe even receive a financial incentive from their employer.
Cost Counts
The opportunity to receive top-level medical treatment at a greatly reduced cost than what is available at home is a key component of medical tourism; Shetty said that treatments in the Cayman Islands facility would cost half as much as in the U.S.
His company has worked with Cayman Island tourism and government officials on plans to create a 2,000-bed health city at the Cayman Islands that will include a large assisted living facility. With life expectancy significantly increasing worldwide, “There is a desperate need of large scale assisted living” in the Caribbean, Shetty wrote.
Plans for Narayana Cayman University Medical Center include advanced care for heart, cancer, eye, gynecological diseases along with organ transplants and cell-based therapy. The Cayman facility is also planned to include a center for tertiary care (specialized consultative care, usually on referral) for patients coming from the Caribbean, South America, Canada and the U.S.
An important component of Narayana Cayman University Medical Center will be education for physicians and other healthcare professionals — what Shetty calls “super specialists of the future”.
