I want to travel abroad for treatment in a private clinic

Some years ago, we received a call for an urgent medical transportation to the United States. A woman from the USA had recently flown to Turkey, where she was having a cosmetic procedure while on holiday there. Unfortunately, the operation had gone badly and she had subsequently developed blood poisoning. Now hospitalized in Turkey, she needed urgent medical care to rectify the problem. When her family identified a private hospital in America where she could receive the specialist treatment she needed, they rang EMS Air Ambulance & Medical Repatriation: could we help?

Thankfully, we were able to take on the case immediately. Once we’d taken down the patient’s details and contacted her chosen hospital, we arranged a medical escort on the next available commercial flight to the United States, along with road ambulance transport between the airports and medical centres. Just a few days later, the woman had received her treatment in the US hospital. She went on to make a full recovery.

Emergency journeys like this one aren’t the only reason, of course, why so many people opt to go abroad for medical reasons. Every year, thousands of patients head overseas to seek treatment in private hospitals – particularly to countries with world-renowned specialist doctors and clinics, such as Germany, the UK, the United States and the UAE. The reasons can include:

Rare treatments: for technology, techniques and procedures that simply aren’t available at home

Specialized care: because the patient feels the expertise and quality of care will be better abroad

Family reasons: because the patient has loved ones abroad and wants to be with them for treatment

This type of travel is commonly known as Medical Tourism. It simply means travelling overseas for treatment in a private medical facility. It’s worth pointing out that EMS Air Ambulance & Medical Repatriation’s Medical Tourism service is focused specifically on travel for medical care – cancer treatments, heart operations, critical surgery and so on.

I’m interested in having treatment abroad: what should I do?

Call us and we’ll be happy to talk you through the process. Our experienced multilingual customer service team is there to assist you. Once we know your destination, we can send you a quote for the transportation. It’s fast and simple – we’ll aim to come back to you with a price in around an hour, in most cases. If you need help finding a foreign hospital, we can send you some recommendations. Although we don’t arrange the treatments themselves, we can send you a list of well-respected clinics and hospitals in your destination country if necessary.

Once you’re ready to go ahead, we’ll handle everything else you need for the trip. We’ll start by working out the best route. This might involve one or more of the following:

Road ambulance: collection and drop-off from home-country bed to foreign hospital bed, either between airports or for the whole, door-to-door journey

Air ambulance: a private flight with emergency care facilities and an advanced medical team

Medical escort: a flight on a commercial airline, accompanied by a trained medic with equipment and medication

We will also sort out all the permissions and documents that you’ll need for your journey abroad. This includes things like visas, passenger locator forms and medical acceptance documents. You can leave the ticket booking and connections to us. And we’ll liaise with your destination hospital so they know when to expect our arrival and will be ready to receive you when you get there.

For ordinary people who are looking into treatment abroad for the first time, these are precisely the kinds of details that can make Medical Tourism feel confusing, overwhelming, or even insurmountable, so we’re very happy to be able to remove those burdens from patients and their families. After all, when you’re arranging treatment in a foreign country, you want to be able to focus fully on the people who matter most.

Contact us

Are you looking into options for medical treatment in another country? Drop us a line today and we’ll explain how we can help. You can call us direct, send an email or message us via WhatsApp.