Jordan Promotes Medical Travel as Its Leisure Renown Grows
Jordan is working to become a major medical tourism destination by leveraging its reputation as a popular travel destination in the Middle East along with its medical industry’s push to increase the number of hospitals accredited by the JCI (Joint Commission International).
This week Jordan’s Private Hospital Association (PHA), which represents private hospitals in the Kingdom, launched a program to increase medical travel from the U.S. with Internet promotions and a familiarization tour of the country’s medical facilities for U.S.-based health insurers.
As part of the effort to promote medical travel from foreign markets, the USAID Jordan Economic Development Program (SABEQ) and PHA in May announced a program to increase the number of JCI-accredited hospitals in Jordan, because such accreditation is seen as a the standard of patient safety and trustworthiness.
The PHA said it believes that JCI accreditation will help boost medical tourism to Jordan from more foreign markets and that dovetails with the USAID Jordan Economic Development Program (SABEQ) to focus on knowledge-based industries as key to Jordan’s economic development.
SABEQ, the program’s Arabic acronym, is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and is a broad economic development initiative focusing on private sector-led growth implemented under a contract between USAID and Deloitte Consulting LLP. (Deloitte’s Center for Health Solutions is a major resource for medical travel and also a partner of Well-Being Travel, the Oyster Bay, NY-based company that is helping travel agents worldwide serve the $6 billion global medical travel market.)
Medical services is one of the key sectors SABEQ identified as a potential engine for economic growth, particularly the country’s opportunities for medical tourism and medical services outsourcing, according to the SABEQ Web site.
Medical services builds on Jordan’s comparative advantage with its educated workforce.
Besides increasing the number of internationally accredited hospitals, SABEQ is supporting Jordan’s medical tourism industry by developing medical liability and medical malpractice laws, implementing IT systems in the medical sector, and helping Jordan to devise an effective domestic and international marketing and promotion strategy for medical travel.
To enhance Jordan’s standing as a destination for medical services, SADEQ intend to leverage the country’s other wellness options, such as the healing properties of the Dead Sea, in collaboration with the USAID Tourism project.
According to Visit Jordan, Dead Sea mud, or pelloid, is mineral-rich alluvial sediment, saturated with sulphide components that cleanses the skin and relieves arthritic and rheumatic pain.
Visit Jordan also claims that the warm, low altitude, high oxygen atmosphere of the Dead Sea area has been shown to help heart surgery patients. Patients who have spent up to three weeks at the Dead Sea resort prior to bypass surgery are shown to have less post-surgery complications, such as diastolic stiffness and dysfunction.
The USAID tourism program helped Jordan implement its National Tourism Strategy designed to increase tourism – and that is proving to be successful.
Petra, Jordan’s well known site, has seen a visitor increase of almost 50% in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009, according to Visit Jordan.
“Come here, do your surgery. Afterward, have a vacation, visit Petra, swim in the Dead Sea,” Dr. Fawzi al-Hammouri, the head the Private Hospitals Association, told the Associated Press in an article run by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
According to Private Hospitals Association figures, 220,000 foreign patients received treatment in the Kingdom’s private hospitals last year, up from 200,000 in 2008 and 190,000 in 2007.
Earlier this year, SABEQ sponsored a delegation from the PHA to the Dubai medical travel conference to promote business from the Gulf States. Libya, Iraq and the Sudan are also key markets for Jordan’s medical travel services. These include kidney replacements, orthopedic procedures, neurological operations and heart surgeries. Dental work is also popular with incoming tourists.
Costs are put at 10% of the standard costs in the U.S.
The World Bank ranked Jordan number one in the region as a medical tourism destination, followed closely by Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and Israel. It said the kingdom ranked fifth in the world in terms of medical tourism destinations.
As it turns to promoting the U.S. market, Jordan’s strengths are its English-speaking doctors trained at or affiliated with the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Johns-Hopkins among other well-known U.S. institutions.
