Authors
Gelman V. Y.
D. Tech. Sc., Professor, Chair of Medical Informatics and Physics1
1 - State budget institution of higher education «North-Western State Medical University named after I. I. Mechnikov» under the Ministry of Public Health and Social Affairs of the Russian Federation
Abstract
There is considerable unevenness in the patient's access to different types of medical care both within countries and between countries. The article considers the impact of medical tourism on decrease of the effects of this non-uniformity. A review of the status and prospects of the global medical tourism development is carried out. The state of medical tourism in Russia is analyzed. We have considered the impact of medical tourism on the role of the patient in the treatment process. It is shown that medical tourism makes it necessary to adjust the concept of modern health care, opening up new ways to fight the spatial non-uniformity of development of medicine. Thus, medical tourism contributes to the increase of health care level of the population. It is noted that, in addition to reducing the spatial non-uniformity of provision of population with qualitative health care services medical tourism contributes to interstate competition between health care systems under conditions of contemporary global economic competition and, thereby, improving their quality, making the medicine to develop more rapidly. It is shown that Russia lags behind many countries of the world in the level of medical tourism development. At the same time, there is an urgent need for its accelerated development, related to the size of the territory and the existing differences in the quality of health care, both among regions and as compared to other countries. We have demonstrated that medical tourism expands the degree of patient participation in the treatment process. It allows the patient to be an active participant in the process by choosing the medical services of required quality out of the entire global range of options.
Key words
healthcare disparities; health services accessibility; medical tourism; quality of health care; health care costs; patient participation; philosophical overview
DOI
References
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