| Verified against primary record | |
| Registration in South Korea | Required to attract foreign patients, Medical Service Act Article 27-2[3] |
|---|---|
| Record read | English translation, 30 September 2026 |
| Independently reported | |
| Formal definition | None identified in WHO, OECD, UN or CDC material |
| Described function | Brokering treatment abroad without being employed by the treating facility[2] |
| Bands apply only to the rows beneath them. The Korean provisions were read in an English translation, not in the Korean original. No provider-supplied figures are used. | |
Medical tourism facilitators are commercial intermediaries who arrange treatment in another country for patients, without being employed by the facility that provides the treatment. No standard definition of the term was identified in material published by the World Health Organization, the OECD, the United Nations or the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s account of medical tourism refers instead to private companies and medical concierge services that patients use to identify facilities abroad.[1]
Usage in medical travel
Snyder and colleagues describe facilitators as private agents who broker medical travel and foreign care arrangements between patients and destination facilities while not being employed by those facilities.[2] The same account records that facilitators commonly receive fees or other benefits from the facilities or physicians with whom they book procedures, which places the intermediary’s remuneration and the patient’s choice of provider in the same transaction.[2]
That account also states that no overarching professional organization provides mandatory monitoring of facilitators, that there are no restrictions on who can take on the role, and that facilitation remains relatively fluid and undefined as a profession.[2] It is a description of the occupation as observed by researchers in 2012, not a statement of law in any particular country.
Regulation
The absence of a profession-wide standard is not the same as an absence of law. South Korea’s Medical Service Act addresses the activity directly. Article 27(3) prohibits introducing, referring or soliciting a patient to a medical institution or a medical person for profit, and then expressly excepts the attraction of foreign patients who are not covered by Korean health insurance.[3]
Article 27-2 requires medical institutions and other persons who intend to attract foreign patients to register with the Minister of Health and Welfare, sets requirements such as guarantee insurance or minimum capital for persons who are not medical institutions, obliges annual reporting of business performance, caps the proportion of beds that superior general hospitals may allocate to foreign patients, and provides grounds on which registration may be revoked.[3] These provisions were read in the English translation published by the Korea Legislation Research Institute on 30 September 2026; the Korean original was not consulted, and no comparable survey of other jurisdictions has been carried out for this entry.
Related terms
Broker, agent and medical concierge service are used for the same or overlapping activity, and sources do not apply them consistently. The World Medical Association’s 2018 statement on medical tourism names brokers among the parties involved, alongside patients, governments, health care providers, insurance providers and travel agencies.[4]
A facilitator is external to the treating hospital. A department inside a hospital that receives patients from abroad is a different function, described separately, and the two are sometimes conflated in commercial material.
See also
- International patient departments, the in-hospital function a facilitator is not part of
- Medical travel coordination, the arranging of records, referral and follow-up that facilitators offer to organise
- Medical tourism stakeholders, where intermediaries sit among the parties with an interest in the trade
- Medical tourism, the underlying activity being brokered
References
- Crist M, Appiah G, Leidel L, Stoney R. Medical Tourism. CDC Yellow Book, 2024 edition. Independently reported: official clinical guidance. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Snyder J, Crooks VA, Wright A, Johnston R. Medical Tourism Facilitators: Ethical Concerns about Roles and Responsibilities. Chapter 13 in Hodges JR, Turner L, Kimball AM, eds. Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism. Praeger, 2012. Independently reported: academic account, not a regulatory definition. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Republic of Korea. Medical Service Act, Act No. 8366, wholly amended 11 April 2007, Articles 27(3) and 27-2. English translation published by the Korea Legislation Research Institute. Verified against primary record: statute opened and read in translation. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- World Medical Association. WMA Statement on Medical Tourism. Adopted by the 69th WMA General Assembly, Reykjavik, October 2018. Verified against primary record: the association’s own adopted policy text. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
Sourcing note: the Korean statutory provisions and the WMA statement were opened and read on 30 September 2026, the statute in an English translation rather than the Korean original. The CDC guidance and the academic account are independently reported and their underlying material was not rechecked. No register of facilitators was identified in any jurisdiction, and no claim is made here about the law in countries other than South Korea. No provider-supplied or industry figures are used.