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COSTA RICA: Beaches, Jungles – and
Operating Rooms
By Daniel Zueras
SAN JOSÉ, Apr 15 (IPS) - With traditional
tourism hit hard by the global recession,
Costa Rica is seeking to draw foreign
visitors by offering low-cost, high-quality
health care – especially targeting people
from the United States, where the same
medical procedures can cost up to four times
more.
Health tourism is growing around the world
due to the high costs of private medical
services in industrialised countries, which
have prompted many to look to developing
countries in search of good quality,
inexpensive care.
More than 40 million people in the United
States (population 306 million) have no
health insurance, which makes them an
attractive potential market for medical
tourism countries like India, Thailand,
Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates,
Argentina, Brunei, Cuba, Colombia, Hong
Kong, South Africa, Hungary, and more
recently, Costa Rica.
Costa Rica has the advantage of proximity to
the United States, good air connections
between the two countries, political and
social stability, and low crime rates.
Most sought-after here are eye surgery and
dental treatment, followed by plastic
surgery, orthopedic procedures, neurosurgery
and gynecological care, according to
government statistics. Foreign patients
generally pay 30 to 60 percent less than
what they would pay back home.
But in some cases, such as coronary bypass
surgery, costs in the United States are four
times higher than in Costa Rica.
A 2008 study by the Deloitte & Touche
international accounting and consulting firm
estimated that the world market for medical
tourism is around sixty billion dollars and
could grow to 100 billion dollars by 2010.
Last year, some 100,000 foreign visitors
came to Costa Rica – known as the
Switzerland of Central America – to undergo
medical procedures in private hospitals,
spending roughly 60 million dollars,
according to private sector estimates that
are accepted by the authorities.
Tourism Minister Ricardo Benavides told IPS
that patients do not generally declare their
reason for travelling to Costa Rica, which
means that estimates of what they spend on
health care visits are obtained from the
hospitals and clinics themselves.
Benavides said there is great potential for
growth, pointing out that health travel to
Costa Rica expanded 20 percent last year, to
1.5 percent of the global medical tourism
industry.
He also noted that for medical travel, the
global economic crisis that originated in
the United States is a key ally.
"It is clearly more economical for them to
get treatment in Costa Rica than in their
own countries," and the crisis has driven
more and more people from all socioeconomic
levels to seek less expensive health care
abroad, said the minister.
Visitors often combine health with
recreation. On average, patients and their
families stay for nearly two weeks in Costa
Rica after the medical treatment, at a total
cost of just over 3,000 dollars – much less
than they would have spent on the operation
alone in their own countries.
The government of Óscar Arias plans to
foment this kind of tourism by means of
actions by the ministries of tourism, health
and foreign trade, including tourist
publicity campaigns abroad and efforts
towards increasing the number of health
centres in the country with the
international credentials necessary to draw
foreign patients.
The Association for the Promotion of Costa
Rican Medicine (PROMED) was also created,
consisting of six health consortiums, three
private hospitals, and several local
universities and hotels.
The hospitals that form part of PROMED are
accredited by the U.S.-based Joint
Commission International (JCI) - obligatory
credentials for health care institutions
interested in breaking into the medical
tourism market. Several U.S. insurers have
already signed alliances with the hospitals.
But the fact that only three medical centres
have been accredited by the JCI is a
problem, because if demand for treatment by
medical tourists continues to grow, it will
outstrip Costa Rica’s capacity to provide
services.
Hospital hotels have begun to crop up over
the last year, offering operating and
recovery rooms along with the services of a
five star hotel.
In the World Health Organisation's (WHO)
ranking of the world's health systems, Costa
Rica ranks 36th, ahead of the United States,
which ranks 37th.
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