Healthy Travel Media, publishers of ’Patients Beyond Borders’ have released an up dated and expanded third edition of the consumer guide to medical tourism and international health travel.
This print and ebook offers health travellers information to help make decisions about traveling abroad for healthcare.
The publisher claims that more than a million US patients will cross borders for medical care in 2014; nearly double the number in 2011. Both figures have to be questioned due to the lack of supporting data; there were no published figures for outbound US medical travel in 2011, there are none now, and analysts suggest that both figures are a huge exaggeration. The risk is that these figures will be used and re-used in future years by commentators and the media as “internet facts”.
Patients Beyond Borders author Josef Woodman says, "Worldwide, millions of patients young and old are without access to quality, affordable medical care, often one diagnosis away from financial ruin."
Patients Beyond Borders lists hundreds of international hospitals and clinics, providing healthcare consumers a wide range of affordable medical tourism options for quality care that did not exist just ten years ago. The book claims that overseas costs savings of 40% to 85% compared to US medical costs are common in more than 20 leading medical destinations around the world. But the publishers do not state where this information comes from.
Patients Beyond Borders is available in print and fully searchable ebook format.
Jeremy Abbate, publishing director of Scientific American Worldview, comments, ’The seeking of health solutions beyond one’s own national boundaries can be seen as part of the broader patient empowerment movement, in which the locus of control begins to shift from provider to health seeker.”