Medical tourism generated NIS 129 million revenue from 3,879 patients for Sheba Medical Center Tel Hashomer Hospital in 2012 - an average of over NIS 33,000 per patient, highlighting the incentive to expand the operation, but these figures also mean scarcer resources for Israelis who must sometimes wait months for examinations.
Medical tourists accounted for 1.15% of Sheba's patients in 2012. It is the percentage that the hospital wants people to remember, including members of the German Committee, chaired by Minister of Health Yael German, which is examining medical tourism and other healthcare issues. The hospital wants to say that the proportion of medical tourists is negligible; a case of much ado about nothing.
The proportion of medical tourists at Rabin Medical Center Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, is even lower, at 0.55%. The proportion of surgical procedures on medical tourists at Sheba 1.9% - is also supposed to reinforce this impression.
"Unused operating rooms have been found," German told the Knesset plenum in an effort to justify the need for unrestricted medical tourism. We are told that operations on medical tourist are generally only carried out in the afternoon, except for special cases, and that no one is harmed. On the contrary.
More tests on tourists
The following figure, however, hospitals are in no hurry to disclose. Although Sheba treated "only" 3,879 medical tourists, the number of ambulatory procedures, which do not require surgical or invasive procedures, soared to 28,265 in 2012 - an average of 7.2 tests per medical tourist.
For the sake of comparison, the average number of tests on all patients at Sheba in 2012 was 2.98. Does this mean that medical tourists, who do not arrive with reimbursement forms from Israeli healthcare funds, and pay more, receive more tests? Perhaps.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 14, 2014
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