Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism

Download or read book Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism written by Jill R. Hodges and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-07-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary international team examines the safety, ethics, and health implications of the emerging global market for health care, and the issues that arise when patients cross borders for medical procedures they cannot afford or access at home, from liposuction to kidney transplants. Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism: Understanding the Global Market for Health Services provides an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of the benefits and risks when health care becomes a global commodity. The collection includes contributions from leading scholars in law and public policy, medicine and public health, bioethics, anthropology, health geography, and economics. This timely and informative handbook looks at medical tourism from the perspective of some of the major regions that send and receive medical tourists, including the United States, the European Union, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Contributors examine how government agencies, medical tourism companies, international hospital chains, and other organizations promote medical tourism and the globalization of health care. The topics explored include the legal remedies available to medical tourists when procedures go awry; potential consequences when patients cross borders for medical procedures that are illegal in their home countries; the relationship of medical tourism to international spread of infectious disease; and the lack of adequate transnational policies and regulations governing the global market for health services.