According to the Bangkok Post, Bumrungrad Hospital sees about 1.2 million patients a year, with 835,000 coming from Southeast Asia, 18,000 from Europe and 19,000 from North America. The greatest number of foreign visitors come from Myanmar, where medical services are poor, driving wealthy Burmese to seek medical care in Thailand. This data is likely to be based on the number of hospital visits, rather than total number of international patients.
The article also quotes David Boucher, chief business transformation officer of Bumrungrad Hospital, speaking at the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s CEO Forum. Mr Boucher promoted the hospital’s advancements such as a robot pharmacist and “smart” connected design; and said that at some point soon Bumrungrad will launch its own mobile app, where patients can sign up for hospital check-ups, speak to a doctor using video chat, get diagnosed and buy medicine with the app.
Reported figures on medical tourism to Thailand tend to be based on total visits by foreign patients to Thai hospitals, rather than numbers of individual medical tourists (a number of hospital visits are often made by one patient). Allowing for this multiple counting, IMTJ estimates medical tourist flow to Thailand to be under 0.5m.
For a more detailed analysis of the medical travel sector in Thailand, visit the IMTJ Country Profile.
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