Medical tourism has become a very prosperous industry in recent years and the future seems to be even brighter. There are those who do not want to wait long months to receive treatment at home, so they travel abroad, to India, for example, where they receive treatment as soon as they arrive.
There have always been fears of maltreatment and frauds in foreign clinics. For example, there are stories of botched plastic surgeries in Mexico, but in general, facilities are good with skilled doctors and state-of-the-art equipment.
There are some signs of specialization in medical tourism. One example is the Escorts Heart Institute and Research Center in Delhi and Faridabad, India, which performs nearly 15,000 heart operations every year, with a death rate during surgery of only 0.8 percent - less than half that of most major hospitals in the United States. Another medical destination is Dubai, which plans to create the largest international medical center between Europe and Southeast Asia. At the facilities run by NMC Specialty Hospital in Dubai, for example, a 100 - bed NMC Speciality Hospital was launched in February 2005.
In some countries there is important research going on. For example, India is among the world’s leading countries in biotechnology research and In South Korea, stem cell research is very intensive.
Balboa Mexico Hospitals is an integrated network system for international healthcare in Los Cabos and Mazatlan.