Medical tourism looks sickly as patients watch their spending By Reuters

By Joanna Plucinska

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Attila Knott has an empty dental hospital in Hungary.

The foreigners with bad teeth he counted on never arrived, deterred first by COVID-19 and now by a cost-of-living crisis that has left the medical tourism industry struggling to recover even after travel restrictions were lifted by the pandemic.

“People are more cautious,” Knott told Reuters, looking at the empty building across the street from his existing Kreativ Dental clinic. “They think twice before spending a lot of money at once on something like dental work.”

The entrepreneur was aiming to open the new facility in March 2020 to serve more patients seeking procedures in Hungary at a cheaper price than back home.

Now, with the number of patients having halved from around 600 a month before COVID struck, he is thinking of branching out into colonoscopies and knee replacements.

For years, traveling abroad to clinics in countries like Hungary and Turkey has been an option for British and North American patients facing long waits, high costs or both for home medical and dental procedures.

Traders expected a quick recovery after travel restrictions were lifted.

But inflation fueled by rising energy and food prices since the Ukraine war began a year ago has left people with little money to spend, especially for cosmetic procedures.

In Hungary, which borders Ukraine, the war itself makes foreigners wary, Knott said.

Rising airfares and reduced flights – and memories of last summer’s travel chaos – are also putting off potential patients, clinic operators and analysts told Reuters.

For some trips, such as those to Turkey, plane tickets may be double what they were in 2019, according to WeCure, which specializes in medical tourism to big hubs like Turkey from countries like Britain.

WeCure said flights, ground transfers and gasoline now accounted for around 15% of the cost of its travel and treatment packages, roughly double their pre-COVID ratio, putting upward pressure on overall prices.

Some clinics, facing their own higher costs, have increased the charges. A hip or knee replacement at Nordorthopaedics in Lithuania is 15% more expensive now than it was five years ago, the clinic told Reuters.

“There will be some trade-offs (for customers),” WeCure CEO Emre Atceken said. “Instead of having a hair transplant. I’d rather pay my gas bills. I’d rather pay my electric bills.”

CREDIT PROCEDURES

To encourage clients, some clinic operators are offering pay-as-you-go options, while crowdfunding has emerged as another source of support.

Atceken said WeCure is offering some customers payment in installments to stretch the cost.

Lyfboat, an Indian company that provides medical services to foreign patients, told Reuters it has collaborated with a fundraising platform called ImpactGuru to help patients pay for essential surgeries.

Some operators target patients in Britain and Canada, where overstretched public health services can mean long delays.

Knott said most of his patients are from Britain and Iceland, while fewer come from other Nordic countries and France.

Linda Frohock, 73, from Staffordshire, said she delayed her retirement, took out a bank loan and used her savings to travel to Budapest for dental implants.

He paid £8,000 instead of the estimated £32,000 the procedure would have cost in Britain.

“If it’s an emergency and only here they can do it, then I wanted them to do it. Somehow, you just have to find what you need,” he said.

ACUTE VS ELECTIVE

The International Medical Travel Journal, published by market intelligence service LaingBuisson, estimates that the medical tourism market is currently worth around $21 billion, less than it was before the pandemic, although publisher Keith Pollard cautioned that the data is flawed. .

With around 7 million medical travelers a year, the IMTJ sees 5% to 10% annual growth as realistic, far less than some projections.

Laszlo Puczko, who runs Budapest-based Health Tourism Worldwide, said clinics that specialize in urgent procedures will weather the economic climate, as even clients feeling financial straits will pay. But those who have competed on price for elective treatments like rhinoplasty will have a harder time surviving, he and others said.

“Orthopedic surgery is something you can’t put off if you have severe arthritis and can’t walk. It’s major, life-changing surgery,” said Vilius Sketrys, who heads sales and marketing for Nordorthopaedics.

Bob Martin, 71, decided to pay around £18,000 for new dental implants at Kreativ. As Britain’s retired NHS nurse manager, Martin’s permanent teeth never erupted and he has struggled for much of his life with dentures.

“If I need to do the job, what choice do I have?” he said.

Patients who need vital dental work will go ahead no matter the cost, Knott said at Kreativ.

“These people usually don’t negotiate. They sign everything we put under their noses.”