Today, the advance of technology has brought people flexibility in distance wherever they want to travel. As the results of this advancement, more and more people are willing to travel, not only for leisure, but also for getting medical treatment. This action is referred as medical tourism (Hall, 2011). Medical tourism is not a new phenomena, however, not every country is popular with medical tourism label. This particular essay will assess the research findings by Hanefeld et al. (2013) on medical tourism in one specific country, United Kingdom and its cost and benefits to the NHS.
In this article Hanefeld et al. (2013) review the challenges and opportunities that may arises as the result of medical tourism in respect to UK National Health Service (NHS). The authors used data gained through analysis of the UK International Passenger Survey (IPS); interviews with 77 UK residents, 63 other UK stakeholders, NHS policy makers, UK nationals; and a review of published literature to identify the effect of inbound and outbound medical tourism on UK NHS that associated with costs and benefits. Their research concerns new NHS that is going to serve greater market elements in consideration of its challenges and opportunities. The authors aware of scarcity of the medical tourism literature that often relies on opaque data from private consultancy firm or unverified media reports. Thus, the authors would like to present stronger evidence by conducting research involving society, health professionals and NHS managers.
From their research, the authors found that there are more UK patients travelling outside the country for medical treatment rather than foreign patients come to UK. The research indicates that South Asia countries, especially I...
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...ore UK people seek treatment abroad rather than locally.
After I have repeatedly reading the article, I found the importance of methodology when it comes to do a research. There are various way of data collection, however, the author should choose the most appropriate method to generate reliable and valid result. Failure in choosing method may result in confusion and unsolved problem. I am choosing this medical tourism article because the author delivered the content with easy writing style. Hence, I could understand what and why medical tourism works.
Overall, the development of medical tourism should be monitored continuously. The authors suggest that medical tourism in UK NHS should be calculated properly to make better decision for health policy maker. Lastly, information on inward foreign patient should be captured to develop future research in this area.
The concepts discussed within the article regarding medicalization and changes within the field of medicine served to be new knowledge for me as the article addressed multiple different aspects regarding the growth of medicalization from a sociological standpoint. Furthermore, the article “The Shifting Engines of Medicalization” discussed the significant changes regarding medicalization that have evolved and are evidently practiced within the contemporary society today. For instance, changes have occurred within health policies, corporatized medicine, clinical freedom, authority and sovereignty exercised by physicians has reduced as other factors began to grow that gained importance within medical care (Conrad 4). Moreover, the article emphasized
Transplant tourism, as defined by Yosuke Shimazono, is “the practice of travelling abroad to obtain organs through commercial transactions” (955). This new phenomenon has emerged as a global answer to the current organ shortage across the world. Currently, 4,500 people in Canada are waiting for a donor to remedy end-stage organ failure, and only an average of 2,000 will receive and organ this year (Government of Canada). In 2012 alone, 256 Canadian men and women died while on waiting lists for donations, meaning the emergence of practices such as transplant tourism has come as no surprise. Of course, the organ trade market has been hard to expose due to a lack of documentation, but certainly
The rise in demand is in part due to an aging population and is reinforced by the prevalence of long-term health conditions. The high cost of treatments is derived from advances in medical science whereby expensive sophisticated techniques are available and specialist medications are employed to control or cure conditions. The poor services offered by the NHS has caused a fall ...
In the U.S and other nations of the world, the health expenditure and number of physicians increase as the economy expands. However, physician shortage is of a great concern globally, which the U.S and the Military Healthcare System (MHS) are no exceptions. According to Garber (2004) “a shortage exit when there is unsatisfied demand, which occurs when the quantity of a good or service is less than what people will be willing to buy at the current price”. For example a long wait time to get an elective surgery done, or a long wait for a patient to get an appointment to see the doctor are evidence of physician shortage. Another definition of shortage is “having a projected supply of physicians that meet less than 80% of the forecasted demand or need, calculated at the estimated means (Scheffler, Liu, Kinfu, & Dal Poz, 2007). The World Health Organization report (2006) estimated that, 57 countries had absolute shortage of 2.3 million physicians. This shortage according to prior studies implied the lack of a sufficient number of health care professionals to deliver skilled health interventions such as child-birth.
... cultural barriers to care. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 18(1), 44-52. Retrieved from http://proxy.samuelmerritt.edu:2106/pmc/articles/PMC1494812/
... of Health Care Systems, 2014: Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. (2015). Retrieved June 04, 2016, from http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2015/jan/international-profiles-2014
The globalization of trade is predominantly relevant for health services that have become a commodity that can be traded in distinct ways. Primarily, health services can be provided across countries. Examples of this include a range of telemedicine tools like tele-diagnostics and tele-radiology as well as medical consultation through traditional and electronic methods. Secondly, patients can travel overseas/abroad to obtain health care or use certain facilities available elsewhere (Pang, 2004).
There was a 10 month research conducted in 2011 with health-care facilities around the world. They were invited to participate in a global survey based on the completion of the HHSA...
The development of knowledge requires a number of processes in order to establish credible data to ensure the validity and appropriateness of how it can be used in the future. For the healthcare industry, this has provided the ability to create and form new types of interventions in order to give adequate care across a of number of fields within the system. Research then, has been an essential part in providing definitive data, either by disproving previous beliefs or confirming newly found data and methods. Moreover, research in itself contains its own process with a methodological approach. Of the notable methods, quantitative research is often used for its systemic approach (Polit & Beck, 2006). Thus, the use of the scientific method is used, which also utilizes the use of numerical data (Polit & Beck). Here, researches make use of creating surveys, scales, or placing a numerical value on it subjects (Polit & Beck). In the end the resulting data is neutral and statistical. However, like all things its approach is not perfect, yet, it has the ability to yield valuable data.
Wu, Z., Roboson, S., & Hollis, B. (2013). The application of hospitality elements in hospitals/practitioner application. Journal of Healthcare Management, 58(1), 47-62. Retrieved from: http://ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1287979397?accountid=8440
The process has rapidly altered the societies through urbanisation, acculturation, modernisation, and social and cultural change (Bhurga and Mastrogianni, 2004). The quality of life in many countries is affected by economic disintegration, unequal distribution of collective wealth, social disruption, political repression, migration and even war (Bhurga and Mastrogianni, 2004)). There is a widening gap between societies which value knowledge and technology and others which are unable to follow progress and self-actualization (Okasha, 2005). In all countries, the development of technology has led to increased information on a range of health care services, resulting in increased
Private and public health care providers suffer from the attraction and retention of qualified health care professionals, such as the number of physicians per 10,000 population is 15 for the UAE while it is 35 for Germany and 25 for Qatar. This is causing slow growth in the development of UAE health care systems (Deloitte & Touche, 2011). The low numbers of physicians per population were because of the failure of the UAE health care system to retain doctors and nurses, as well as some of the doctors leaving their jobs while some nurses leave their positions annually. The attraction and retention of staff is hampered by a lack of continuing education because of a shortage of medical schools which are showing elevation of capabilities and professional development.... ...
For the past few decades other forms of tourism, also known as niche tourism, have been becoming more popular, particularly:
Tourism is an important and intricate element to society. It affects economical, social, cultural and environmental elements. Tourism can be argued to have a negative impact on the environment and decrease our already depleting resources, but tourism can also be argued to be a major contributor to strengthening economies, spread cultural traditions and improve people’s lives. Tourism
While medical tourism is often generalized to travel from high-income countries to low-cost developing economies, other factors can influence a decision to travel as well, including diferences between the funding of public healtcare or general access to healthcare.