Medical tourism is the fastest-growing sunrise enterprise in my country, with a market scale of up to 2 billion yuan and a market depth of 60 billion yuan. At present, there are about thousands of travel agencies and medical institutions that launch medical tourism products in China with varying quality. The variety of projects and chaotic price gradients have brought certain drawbacks to the development of the medical tourism market.

1. Low threshold for institutional qualifications and high requirements

As an emerging cross-industry industry, medical tourism currently has no clearly stipulated regulations to define the qualifications of medical tourism companies. In theory, as long as tourism agencies with formal outbound travel qualifications can engage in medical tourism services. Tourism agencies have relatively small problems, but it is difficult to guarantee overseas medical services in tourist destinations:

(1) Travel agencies lack professional screening capabilities for overseas medical service providers

(2) Tour guides specializing in medical tourism are scarce (proficient in medical knowledge)

(3) Some institutions without travel agency qualifications are also working as medical travel agents. They hand over visas, air tickets, local connections, tour guides and other services to other travel agencies. If a mistake occurs in a certain link, it cannot be resolved.

Consumption reminder: Choose large-scale service agencies with good reputation. These travel agencies will be more cautious in screening overseas suppliers or providing professional services.

2. Large investment in professional resources and small output

The medical tourism industry has high requirements for employees, especially critical referral projects. Even tour guides with domestic medical backgrounds are sometimes not competent. Medical communication, medical record translation, medical treatment communication, post-treatment recuperation, etc. require not only a certain degree of medical knowledge, but also an understanding of local characteristics of tourism and recuperation services. It is very difficult to recruit suitable excellent tour guide talents from abroad or cultivate them themselves. Moreover, as the number of companies engaged in medical tourism increases and the market matures, prices are gradually transparent, and profits are further thinning.

Niu Song, general manager of the organizer of China International Medical Tourism Exhibition, gave an example. For example, the price of Japan's precision physical examination is almost the same as the price of domestic precision physical examination. Japan's precision physical examination can detect millimeter-level tumors in cancer screening, while in China only centimeter-level tumors can be detected. Therefore, in the medical tourism sector, travel agencies invest a lot. The biggest piece is in the reserve and training of talents, but the output ratio is very small.

Consumption reminder: Actively ask medical tourism agencies to provide resumes of tour guides to find out whether they have medical background and overseas training or education experience. Fully examine the professionalism and authority of medical tourism institutions, tour guides, and overseas medical institutions. In addition, if the agency is making an appointment for you with a medical institution or a personal doctor, you should also consult carefully.

3. The prices are chaotic and the projects are miscellaneous

The prices of the same Japanese medical examination products vary widely, ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 RMB. As an ordinary consumer, it is difficult to distinguish whether it is cheap but not good, or whether the merchants are making huge profits.

The expenses of medical tourism institutions mainly include three aspects:

(1) Tourism service fees, including air tickets, accommodation, leisure, etc., are affordable and frugal.

(2) Medical service expenses, which mainly include preliminary consultation, case translation, and accompanying translation.

(3) Medical examination fees. Most institutions will indicate that this part of the fees is clearly priced and paid directly to overseas medical institutions.

However, the most ambiguous thing is precisely the medical expenses. The person in charge of Japan Medical Tourism Co., Ltd. said that taking physical examinations as an example, the prices of high-end private hospitals, authoritative public hospitals and ordinary regular hospitals and small clinics are very different; the costs of different physical examinations are also very different. For example, ordinary physical examinations are very cheap, and gastroscopes, colonoscopes, etc. involving anesthesia are very expensive. Some non-standard intermediaries provide seemingly rich medical examination items, but in fact most of them are cheap and regular items. They collect high profits from them, some as much as 50%. However, even if you get the medical examination price list from an overseas hospital, you will be confused because the items involved are too professional and complicated.

Consumption reminder: Due to the intertwined nature of the three parts of expenses, some travel agencies simply package and launch them, making it difficult to have a price standard. Consumers can only understand from multiple sources and compare and select them according to their own needs.