What does the future look like for the medical travel industry? It's a question that McKinsey & Company has been looking at for the past eight months, says consultant Ceani Guevara, who worked on a report with colleagues Tilman Ehrbeck and Paul D. Mango.
"There didn't seem to be a lot of facts on the market, so we thought it was important to develop a real fact base [so we] could shed some light on [it]," Guevara says. McKinsey defines medical travelers as people who travel exclusively for the purpose of receiving medical care. The firm researched data from more than 20 countries on four continents for "Mapping the Market for Medical Travel."
One key determination McKinsey made, however, is that there are fewer travelers than previously thought. "The market today is significantly smaller than conventional wisdom suggests. And most of today's medical travelers seek high quality and faster service, not lower costs," Guevara says.
