Kevin Wyatt stretched out on sparkling white sheets, gazing
at the palm trees outside his
 |
| Sherene Azli,and Richard Poi. |
room in sunny Kuala Lumpur. After a long
international flight, Wyatt, an avid cyclist from South Carolina, was eager to
roam the sprawling city’s Chinatown and chow down on steaming nasi lemak during
a 13-day stay in Malaysia’s glitzy capital. But first there was a bit of
business to attend to: His spotless suite was actually an operating room, his
comfy bed a gurney. The first stop on his tourist itinerary in this tropical
locale was a hospital, to go under the knife for a replacement knee. The cost:
$5,000 less than he would have paid at home, even including airfare and
wellness-resort stays.
Wyatt is just one of thousands of surgery-seeking
vacationers who have packed their bags for Malaysia in recent years. Medical
tourism is a booming business in the small Southeast Asian country of space-age
skyscrapers and six-story shopping malls. In the last 10 years, as health care
costs have risen and the world’s population has grown older, Malaysia’s
industry has swelled tenfold to $180 million as people from across the globe
have flocked there to get a piece of the country’s cheap, quality health care.
According to the International Medical Travel Journal, it’s the top medical
travel “destination of the year,” and the industry in Malaysia is forecast to
grow by 15 percent annually. It’s just a slice of the growing global medical
tourism pie that’s worth up to $55 billion, with 11 million cross-border
patients worldwide, according to Patients Beyond Borders.
“It’s not about cutting corners. It’s not about
compromising. It’s not about shortchanging anyone.”
That’s thanks to the country’s rock-bottom property and real
estate prices, English-speaking physicians and plethora of medical-device
manufacturers. Singapore and Thailand, once thriving medical havens for
budget-conscious patients, are struggling to compete due to rising prices and
lagging infrastructure. Moreover, as Ara Damansara Medical Centre CEO Sue Lee
explains, Malaysia is banking on the region’s growing gray tsunami — by 2050,
the number of people 60 and older will triple in Southeast Asia. “Anti-aging
treatments and fix-me-ups,” like hip replacements, cosmetic surgeries and
dental work, are in high demand from the cash-strapped elderly, says Sherene
Azli, the CEO of Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council.
For visitors, it’s like booking an all-inclusive vacation
package, with the added bonus of a face-lift or new dentures. The Malaysia
Healthcare Travel Council offers a $700 deal for a city tour, a four-night
hotel stay at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur and an executive health
screening. “It’s an end-to-end service,” explains Azli. In Wyatt’s case, his
medical journey in 2013 included a private limousine that whisked him to the
airport, a stay for him and his wife at the Club Saujana Resort and an
executive suite hospital room that offered a garden balcony with twice-a-day
tea service. There are even designated lounges and ambulance bays for medical
tourists at the international airports in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. Malaysia is
a “hidden [health care] gem” that delivers “peace of mind,” says Azli.
It can be hard to keep anxiety at bay, though, when you’re
undergoing a procedure thousands of miles away from home, says Keith Pollard, a
medical tourism maven in London who publishes the International Medical Travel
Journal. Going abroad for medical treatment is not a lighthearted decision for
most patients, he says; most actually have no other option — it’s a “last resort.”
“The biggest barrier is fear of the unknown, fear of something going wrong,
fear that they won’t understand me,” he says. Nobody wants poorly trained
doctors who haphazardly slice and dice in a developing country. When treatment
turns sour, medical malpractice suits are hard to navigate in foreign lands.
But take a chill pill, says Azli: “It’s not about cutting
corners. It’s not about compromising. It’s not about short-changing anyone.”
Unlike in many other established medical tourism destinations, the Malaysian
government works hand in hand with the country’s medical sector to keep things
on the up and up. It has tax breaks for hospitals to upgrade their equipment,
relaxed visa restrictions for inbound medical tourists and regulations that
standardise the costs and quality of treatments across its hospitals. The
Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council works under the auspices of the Ministry of
Health, which collaborates with hotels, clinics, hospitals, insurance
companies, airlines and all the other players in the medical tourism field.
This public-private partnership is key to emerging medical tourism industries,
since making money and healing people don’t aways coincide. Malaysia, Azli
says, is “cautious to not commoditise” its health care as other countries have
done.
While Malaysia’s model is no cure-all for a growing
affordable health care crisis, other nations ought to take note, say health
care professionals. Overseas treatments could be covered by more health
insurance plans in the next few years, and countries like Malaysia want to make
it easier to access cheap, top-notch health care, with the added perk of
sipping mimosas beachside while recovering from surgery. One year after getting
his new knee, Kevin Wyatt says, he picked up a tennis racket for the first time
in nine years. “Three sets later,” he recalls proudly, he was tired, “but no
worse for the wear.”
BY LESLIE NGUYEN-OKWUNOV
Tony Benner & Richard Poi
OZE TRAVEL REPRESENTATION
Medical Tourism Specialists - Malaysia
Box Q204, QVB Post Office,
Sydney, Australia, 1230
Tel. +612 9279 1194 or 0407 366 140
