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Medical Tourism is Thriving
Greetings from the O.R.: Florida's medical facilities are cultivating a thriving business among foreigners seeking healthcare. About 400,000 patients visited the U.S. in 2008.
Marketing and Services
 Aventura Hospital and Medical Center capitalizes on its location on Florida’s east coast. |
» Last October, the Mayo Clinic opened an information office in a large medical office building in Guatemala, a country from which it receives a large number of patient referrals. Patients who are unable to travel to the U.S. can get virtual second opinions on their case from Mayo.
» Aventura Hospital and Medical Center, located between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, markets a “Weekend at Aventura” package to international executives. The package includes a complete physical as well as three nights’ deluxe accommodations, limousine transport to and from the airport and store discounts at the nearby Aventura Mall.
» Orlando Health, a 1,780-bed system that serves more than 6,000 international patients each year, has an electronic database of staff translators who are fluent in 20 languages. For less common languages, the facility relies on a telephone translation service. Orlando Health also requires many of its staff members to take part in a cross-cultural training program so that the hospital personnel are sensitive to and can more easily accommodate a patient’s religious requirements or food requests. Orlando Health employees also help patients get tickets to Walt Disney World, Sea World and Universal Studios.
Medical Meetings
 Burnham Institute |
As hospitals court patients from abroad, Florida cities are also looking to increase their share of the lucrative medical meetings market. Orlando, the nation’s top-ranked medical meeting hub for the past decade, played host to more than 215 medical meetings with 170,000 attendees in 2008. Local tourism officials hope a new medical city at Lake Nona — which will include the Burnham Institute, the University of Central Florida medical school, a new veterans hospital and Nemours Children’s Hospital — will generate even more interest in the area as a site for medical meetings. Jacksonville tourism officials, meanwhile, have created a website — VisitJacksonville.com/medical — and are working closely with local medical facilities to try to expand their reach into both the health tourism and medical meeting market.
