A medical holiday in Mexico.
With lower costs for medical treatment and its location, Mexico could be the operating room for Americans requiring medical treatment.
The Mexican Employers Association (Coparmex) says that by betting on medical tourism, the country could capture as much as US $1.7 billion annually by treating 120,000 patients from the United States.
Coparmex president Juan Pablo Castañón Castañón says Mexico’s challenge in the next eight to 10 years is to earn receipts of $10 billion to $12 billion in foreign exchange for medical services.
The organization believes that there are opportunities for medical tourism in odontology, orthopedics and cardiology, for which Mexico “must aspire to be the operating room of the United States.”
Castañón said the potential for growth is great because of the size of the market. In the U.S. alone, he said, nearly 40% of the population lacks adequate financial means to treat medical problems. Plus it is estimated that 33.5 million people of Mexican origin live and work in the U.S. and they too represent a market for the Mexican operating room.
A pilot project began in May in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, with the objective of attending to the binational market in the border area, treating patients of Hispanic origin in both countries.
Coparmex thinks Mexico should take advantage of its competitive advantages, such as geographical location, quality and treatment costs. The latter, it says, are between 40% and 60% more expensive on the other side of the border.
There is already a movement under way in Yucatán to offer tour packages that include clinic or hospital stays along with hotel accommodation, transportation and food, among other services.
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