Make sure the doctors change needles after every use. In some countries, this is not a given. Hopefully, in your medical tourism search, you will discover and avoid these countries.
Over the past 20 years, there has been a rise in transplant tourism. This has led to an increase in organ rejection rates abroad compared with U.S. organ transplant patients. This has to be concerning to those patients.
Ethical Issues
Ethical issues come into play where there is the potential for abuse of organ procurement procedures. And in India, there is a noticeable trend in which medical tourists seem to get all the appointment times for “good” doctors, while resident patients have to wait for long periods of time for doctors who may provide less exemplary care. This, they say, exacerbates the class-based problems that already exist in that society.
Legal Issues
Legally, there are many gray areas concerning medical tourism. Should something go wrong, what is the patient’s recourse? Depending on the country, the rules are vastly different. If the wronged patient did not have enough insurance to cover this glitch in treatment, who will pay? Hospitals and doctors overseas may lack the appropriate insurance to cover any judgments against them. The medical tourist may be out of luck without recourse or recompense.
Those who choose elective surgery outside of the U.S. could have a difficult time getting justice for a botched surgery.
In his book on medical tourism, Beauty From Afar: A Medical Tourist’s Guide to Affordable and Quality Cosmetic Care Outside the U.S. Jeff Schult states, “My sort of blunt advice is that if your primary concern in going to a doctor, surgeon or dentist is whether or not you’re going to have legal recourse if you don’t like the work you get, you shouldn’t go overseas.”