| Verified against primary record | |
| Parties named by the WMA | Patients, brokers, governments, health care providers, insurance providers, travel agencies[1] |
|---|---|
| Record read | WMA policy text, 30 September 2026 |
| Independently reported | |
| Formal definition | None identified for the phrase itself |
| Evidence base | Described in a 2010 review as mostly speculative[2] |
| Bands apply only to the rows beneath them. The WMA list is that association’s own enumeration, not a regulatory definition. No provider-supplied figures are used. | |
Medical tourism stakeholders is used for the parties with an interest in treatment obtained across borders. No formal definition of the phrase was identified in material published by the World Health Organization, the OECD, the World Trade Organization or the European Union. The nearest authoritative enumeration is the World Medical Association’s 2018 statement on medical tourism, which names patients, brokers, governments, health care providers, insurance providers and travel agencies.[1]
Usage in medical travel
Lists differ in what they include. A 2010 scoping review identifies medical tourists, providers and physicians, hospitals, governments and policy makers, brokerages, and local populations in destination countries.[2] That list includes the destination country’s own population, which the WMA enumeration does not, and omits travel agencies, which it does.
Pocock and Phua add government departments as separate actors with separate objectives, recording that trade and tourism ministries are primarily concerned with economic growth and facilitating trade in services while health objectives such as universal coverage emphasise equity.[3] On that account the state is not one stakeholder but several with differing aims.
Conflicting interests
The tension most often documented is between foreign patients and the destination country’s own population. NaRanong and NaRanong, writing on Thailand in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, state that medical tourism has exacerbated the shortage of medical staff by drawing workers towards hospitals catering to foreigners.[4] Pocock and Phua describe two-tier provision in Malaysia, with private services limited to those who can afford them and public services for the rest, and report that dual practice, in which doctors combine salaried public work with private fee-for-service work, is common among specialists.[3]
The World Medical Association takes a position on that conflict, holding that medical tourism should not negatively affect the proper use of limited health care resources or the availability of appropriate care for local residents, and that authorities including government should be able to stop elective medical tourism where it endangers the ability to treat the local population.[1]
That sits awkwardly alongside what governments are documented as doing. In Jamaica, Johnston and colleagues found that the agency most active in developing the sector was the national investment promotion body, while the health and tourism ministries participated in a more limited consultative role rather than overseeing policy.[5] A less frequently stated interest runs the other way: Pocock and Phua argue that when fee-paying patients travel abroad, their domestic health systems lose out, and that the option to leave reduces pressure for domestic improvement.[3]
Strength of the evidence
These effects are not uniformly established. The 2010 scoping review accepted 203 sources and found that only six were empirical studies reporting primary data, concluding that what is known about the effects of medical tourism is minimal, unreliable, geographically restricted and mostly based on speculation.[2]
The strength of individual findings also varies. The Thai account is specific to Thailand and its authors note that Thai data does not separate medical tourists from other foreign patients.[4] In the Jamaican study, the loss of senior clinicians to private care for international patients was raised by a minority of those interviewed, as a prospective concern rather than an observed effect.[5]
See also
- Medical tourism supply chains, the same parties described by sequence rather than by interest
- Medical tourism and health equity, the distributional questions these conflicts raise
- Medical tourism and health system capacity, the workforce and facility effects described above
- Medical tourism facilitators, the brokers named in the WMA enumeration
References
- 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.
- Johnston R, Crooks VA, Snyder J, Kingsbury P. What is known about the effects of medical tourism in destination and departure countries? A scoping review. International Journal for Equity in Health, 9:24, 3 November 2010. DOI 10.1186/1475-9276-9-24. Independently reported: peer-reviewed review. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Pocock NS, Phua KH. Medical tourism and policy implications for health systems: a conceptual framework from a comparative study of Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Globalization and Health, 7:12, 4 May 2011. DOI 10.1186/1744-8603-7-12. Independently reported: peer-reviewed comparative study. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- NaRanong A, NaRanong V. The effects of medical tourism: Thailand’s experience. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2011, 89(5), pages 336 to 344. Independently reported: peer-reviewed research published by WHO, not WHO policy. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Johnston R, Crooks VA, Ormond M. Policy implications of medical tourism development in destination countries: revisiting and revising an existing framework by examining the case of Jamaica. Globalization and Health, 4 July 2015. DOI 10.1186/s12992-015-0113-0. Independently reported: peer-reviewed case study. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
Sourcing note: the WMA statement was opened and read on 30 September 2026. The four research sources are independently reported; their underlying datasets and interviews were not re-examined. The effects described are documented in specific countries and specific years and are not established as general, a limitation the 2010 review states of the literature as a whole. No canonical list of stakeholders exists, and the differences between the lists cited here are reported rather than reconciled.