Improving Estimates of Exports and Imports of Health Services and Goods

Overview

Trade in health services and its most well-known component „medical tourism‟ has attracted a great deal of media attention and newspaper column inches in recent years. You could be forgiven for believing that a large part of the population are constantly seeking their health care abroad or buying their pharmaceuticals over the internet from foreign providers. The apparent growth in such „imports‟ and „exports‟ has been fuelled by a number of factors. Technological advances in information systems and communication allow patients or third party purchasers of health care the possibility to seek out quality treatment at lower cost and/or more immediately from health care providers in other countries. An increase in the portability of health cover, whether as a result of regional arrangements with regard to public health insurance systems, or developments in the private insurance market, is also poised to further increase patient mobility. All this is coupled with a general increase in the temporary movement of populations for business, leisure or specifically for medical reasons between countries.