Comprehensive Report: Malaysian Medical Tourism Industry

This report provides an overview of medical tourism in Malaysia, highlighting its emergence since 1999 and its growth driven by affordable healthcare, advanced medical services, and government support. It discusses the role of the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council and the Ministry of Health in promoting medical tourism, focusing on key destinations like Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Melaka. The report analyzes the factors attracting medical tourists, including cost-effectiveness, skilled medical professionals, multilingual capabilities, and attractive environments. It also addresses the challenges and negative aspects, such as post-treatment care and medical liability issues, proposing solutions like uniform legislation and follow-up treatments. The report references key studies and statistics to support its analysis, offering insights into the dynamics and future of medical tourism in Malaysia.

Running head: Malaysian Medical Tourism
Medical Tourism

Malaysian Medical Tourism 1
Contents
Medical Tourism in Malaysia..........................................................................................................1
References........................................................................................................................................4

Malaysian Medical Tourism 2
Medical Tourism in Malaysia
Medical tourism is a dynamic concept of hospitality and tourism industry. The term medical
tourism described as a tourist travel in another country other than his home country due to the
factors of unavailability of quality medical treatment, undeveloped state of home country, and
lack of medical techniques in home country (Connell, 2008). The Malaysian tourism often
actively sought to encourage industry of Medical tourism by its efficient services or facilities
provided to tourists.
The history of Malaysian tourism traces from the first introduction of Medical health sector in
1999. It became popular by certain aspects that it provided affordable medicinal services,
attracting by services like health spas, health resorts, and doctors’ best endeavor to introduce a
fresh concept like sea and mud bathing (Turner, 2007).
The Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council playing a key role in promoting and availing excellent
health services in Malaysia for their foreigner tourists. The Malaysian Ministry of Health's
website provides an aid to tourist by availability of their guide in plain English language. The
guide includes numerous sources and information about hospitals offering medical care and
treatment with an availability of entire process of reaching to the hospital with adequate
information about statistics and summary of expertise in it.
The most of the destination of these private hospital located mainly in the cities of Kuala
Lumpur, Penang and Melaka of Malaysia. As per the appreciation given by the World Health
Organization (WHO), the Malaysian government is able to provide overall excellent services in
the designated health care hospitals on the basis of their overall performance. According to
statistic of WHO, the Malaysia contributes six percent of their GDP to health department. It also
successfully established several regional health hubs for medical tourism among different cities
of the Malaysia. Moreover, several private hospitals like Country Height Health Tourism are
drawing attentions of foreigner tourists on a proposed statics of approximate in able to bring
10,000 tourists monthly for medical services at a corporate level of Malaysia (Leng, 2010).

Malaysian Medical Tourism 3
According to Musa and Thirumoorthi (2016), the following elements are identified on the basis
of geographical, social, political and environmental reasons to attract tourists for medical tourist
destination
The foremost element is that the Malaysian government offers exceptional services of medical
by their public and private listed healthcare centers at very inexpensive prices. In the year of
2015, Malaysian government recorded approximately over 850,000 foreigner medical tourists
who shared their experienced of huge savings on their undergone surgeries.
The Malaysia affords best medical experts as the pioneer artist in the field of medical. The
medical experts are highly trained and experienced especially in the patient care (Heung,
Kucukusta and Song, 2010)
The Malaysia in accustomed by multi lingual or multicultural society eases the communication
between the international professionals in the medical and medical tourist. The majority of
Malaysian population speaks in English as well as in their linguistic language. In case of
language interpretation, the tourist are also provided with any particular translator assistance by
the hospitals in Malaysia (Chee, 2007).
The beauty of Malaysia’s considered as a most dominant factor in influencing medical tourism.
Most of the hospitals and medical centers are placed in most beautiful destinations of Malaysia.
The country offers stable view of atmosphere as it contain both peaceful and vivacious
environment at the same time which safeguard the surroundings of medical.
Moreover, the Malaysia considered as a most moderate and stable governance. The dominating
factors of Malaysia in the year of 2015 are that it has low crime, attracting hospitality,
multicultural community and most demanding or exotic tourist destination.
The country is also blessed with factors of overall stability in the social and economic. In so far
the Malaysia is known for its attractive beauty, remarkable food, and friendly Malaysian
populations.
Though positives outcomes in the medical tourism are working appropriately, but still require to
work upon negative issues arise in medical tourism. Such negative issues are influenced by
several reasons such as medical tourist requires the follow-up treatment once they return to their

Malaysian Medical Tourism 4
home. Mostly the medical tourists undergo from post treatment complications.in such
circumstances the consequences affect the tourist health. A solution to this problem can be that
medical tourist should be treated in their home country after post procedure. Other negative
consequences in Medical Tourism proceeds from the fact that legislation of different countries
relating to medical liability is not as strict as other legislation in developed countries. The
amount of Compensation for medical negligence is different among Malaysia and other nations.
The procedure of medical negligence is also not covered in an ambit of health insurance. The
recommendation for this present solution is that an application of uniform legislation is required
for the cases of medical negligence or malpractices.

Malaysian Medical Tourism 5
References
Chee, H.L., 2007. Medical tourism in Malaysia: international movement of healthcare consumers
and the commodification of healthcare.
Connell, J., 2008. Medical tourism: Sea, sun, sand and… surgery. Tourism management, 27(6),
pp.1093-1100.
Heung, V.C., Kucukusta, D. and Song, H., 2010. A conceptual model of medical tourism:
Implications for future research. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 27(3), pp.236-251.
Leng, C.H., 2010. Medical tourism and the state in Malaysia and Singapore. Global Social
Policy, 10(3), pp.336-357.
Musa, G. and Thirumoorthi, T., 2016. Tourism in Malaysia. The Routledge Handbook of
Tourism in Asia.
Turner, L., 2007. ‘First world health care at third world prices’: globalization, bioethics and
medical tourism. BioSocieties, 2(3), pp.303-325.