ABSTRACT
The authors review the patterns and nuances of growth in medical tourism throughout the world as people travel away from their home environments for a variety of healthcare purposes. Medical tourism has grown exponentially (until the COVID-19 pandemic) owing to technological advances, new treatment options, lower costs and combining vacation time with medical procedures. Many places throughout the world have established themselves as important medical destinations, one of which is borderlands. Border areas are now one of the most visited regions for medical and healthcare purposes. In most cases, people cross borders near their homes because of the lower cost of healthcare abroad and their reasonable proximity to an international frontier. Likewise, high-quality medical treatments and convenience also draw people to border areas. Although general medical tourism often involves leisure and sightseeing, most border medical tourism is geared overwhelmingly to utilitarian care without a lot of leisure-oriented motives, although these do exist. Cross-border networks and insurance coverage are important in facilitating transfrontier medical tourism, and the phenomenon manifests geographically in two ways: unique urban morphologies occur through the notion of clustering and border proximity, and certain border communities become known as specialized destinations for specific treatments.
