Medical tourism for procedures that will serve to undermine health equity and the sustainability of the health system in destination countries is therefore a potential violation of the patient's social responsibility.
In addition to wanting to address a personal health need through surgery, the review captured three types of factors motivating patients' engagement in medical tourism: (1) procedure-based; (2) travel-based; and (3) cost-based.
While wait-lists and wait-listing played a role in motivating many of the participants to look for care outside of Canada, it is important to note that participants provided examples of all three of the regularly cited motivations for medical tourism, those of procedure cost, availability, and wait-listing [ 12].
The government is playing a supporting role by promoting tourism abroad, regulating visa procedures for tourists and working on new destination routes with Emirates Airlines, which is owned by the national government of the United Arab Emirates.
While some forms of medical tourism for purely elective procedures like cosmetic surgery may not place the medical tourist in a position of great need, any medical procedure carries risks of adverse side effects and post-operative infections.
Canadian patients are known to travel to a range of medical tourism destinations, both for procedures that are covered in the public Medicare system (eg, orthopaedic surgeries) and those that are not (eg, dental care).
Related to cost, a lack of insurance, or being underinsured, may also push people into medical tourism, in that if procedures cannot be covered by their insurance plans then they may be pushed abroad in search of more affordable care [ 5, 17, 35- 38].
In the patient testimonial videos we examined, content on the benefits of undertaking the given procedure through medical tourism far out-weighed content on the risks of undergoing such procedure, if the risks were discussed at all.
The talks promise lower tariffs, stronger intellectual property protection, reduced barriers for financial, construction, tourism and other services, better procedures to settle trade disputes and other advances.
Patients can purchase a range of procedures from medical tourism facilities, including unproven interventions that are unavailable or illegal in their home countries, such as stem cell interventions, and routine procedures that are readily available where they live, such as orthopaedic surgeries [ 9, 10].
