Press release

Medical tourism in Panama

LA PRENSA/Archivo

PUNTA PACÍFICA. is the hospital that applies for the accreditation of the JCAHO.911515

Shelmar Vásquez Sween

Different countries have begun to see the medical tourism like an opportunity make businesses, since it is an industry that moves approximately thousand 500 million dollars to the year.

In this sense, the chief of a main directorate of the Hospital Pacific End, affiliated with Johns Hopkins Medicine International, Yariela of of Sanctis, clarifies that health tourism is not the call “” that is limited the group of people who travels of his country from origin to other to be put under an aesthetic surgery, to enjoy spa or resort, but of the set that is transferred to a foreign country exclusively to practice a test diagnoses specialized, a treatment or a complex surgery.

The director of the hospital assures that although Panama is giving his first pininos in this matter - in front of leaders of the market who take years doing it like India, Thailand, Costa Rica, Chile and Brazil it reunites all the conditions to incursionar successfully in this niche.

Between the virtues of the country she mentioned: its levels of security, infrastructure of basic services (light, water, telephone, highways, etc.), salubrity levels, to govern themselves by a democratic political system and to count on robust a banking center that allows that the foreigner can make economic transitions, although their currency is the lira, euro or the peseta.

Another advantage, adds, is that it is a multicultural place that is characterized to welcome within its geography all type of people without concerning its race or religion. To this the affinity is added to him that has the population to the English language, to have the dollar like homologous currency, and that every time are more specialized doctors than, even, they look for qualification abroad.

Now, of of Sanctis, that exposed the subject in XII the Forum of Tourism: “The route to the social growth” that was made this week in the Great Hall the Sheraton Panama Hotel, aimed that the world cannot know these conditions, but begins to give promotion him. It shows that first it would be that the hospitals of the country demonstrate that they are centers of health of first level. For example, in the case of the Pacific End, they have worried to fulfill the lineamientos necessary to decide on the approval of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), organization that certifica to the hospitals outside the United States considering its quality on watch and security of the patients.

Of there, it comments, the authorities of each hospital must worry to participate in international congresses to occur to know, to affiliate themselves with the fairs to have access to end technology and to participate in interviews and advertising guidelines in international means. In addition, they must be allied with international insurance agencies and support the idea to create a visa of medical tourism, to help to collapse the barriers of those countries that have difficulty to enter Panama.