Fully vaccinated medical travellers welcome
The United States is open for foreign medical patients. This follows some uncertainty among medical travellers due to the closing of borders because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The United States is definitely open to fully vaccinated international medical travellers,” declared USCIPP (the US Cooperative for International Patient Programs), when speaking to Middle East Health.
All non-immigrant, non-citizen air travellers to the United States will require proof of vaccination before boarding an aircraft to the US, according to the US State Department, which updated the requirements for air travellers to the United
States on November 8. [1]
According to USCIPP, acceptable vaccines include those approved by the U.S. FDA or authorized by the WHO for emergency use. This includes Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca/Oxford, Sinopharm, Sinovac, and Covishield.
The US State Department says exceptions to this policy will be extremely limited and include: children under 18; people medically unable to receive the vaccine; and emergency travellers who do not have timely access to a vaccine.
“Humanitarian exemptions to this order will be granted on an extremely limited basis,” the State Department emphasises.
Speaking to USCIPP about the affects of the pandemic on medical travellers to the US, the organisation said that there had been a notable downturn in the number of medical travellers, but could not provide specific figures for patients from the GCC.
USCIPP – the US Cooperative for International Patient Programs, an organizational membership program of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership – is a consortium of 60 American hospitals and health systems that share a focus on providing care to international patients, offering cross-border education and training programs, providing management and consulting services to hospitals and governments abroad, and offering various other forms of international collaborations in healthcare.
According to figures from their membership, between July 2018 and June 2019 (the benchmarking year prior to the start of the pandemic), 66,529 total unique international patients were reported by 51 organizations. This compares to 55,785 international patients between July 2019 and June 2020, reported by 47 organisations.
USCIPP was careful to point out that these figures should not be interpreted as a complete assessment of patient numbers. “This difference between this unique international patient total and the July 2019–June 2020 total should not be interpreted as a simple percent decrease, as the number of hospitals reporting in the two years is different, and different hospitals may have reported their unique international patient totals in one year but not the other.”
In addition, USCIPP explained that while the 51 USCIPP members who reported international patient numbers comprise many of the US hospitals and health systems, they do not represent all the US hospitals that have international patient programs. As such the figures should be viewed as a lower bound for the actual size of the US market.
Lessons from the pandemic
Asked how the pandemic had affected their members’ ability to treat international patients and if there would be any significant changes to their programs in the future, USCIPP said that during the pandemic many institutions pivoted to providing international telemedicine and remote second opinions, virtual advisory and consulting services, and virtual education and training services.
“For many US providers, the pandemic reinforced the notion that the international medical travel industry is cyclical and vulnerable to shocks, but can bounce back. The pandemic also highlighted the importance of the work that the international departments do,” USCIPP explained.
“The loss of international patient volume affects institutions’ abilities to fulfil the part of hospitals’ missions related to helping expand the global reach of medical breakthroughs and innovations and had a disproportionate impact on many institutions’ financial stability. Compared to before the pandemic, there will most likely be an even greater focus on timely payments from international payors moving forward.”
In terms of lessons learned, USCIPP said US healthcare organizations should continue to adapt to changes and be innovative regarding new ways of working together internationally. This would include the aforementioned services in addition to holding virtual, international symposia as well as virtual tumour boards between physicians at institutions in different countries.
“We are seeing signs that all of these areas of work will, as expected, deepen existing collaborations and expand relationships in ways that will also spill over into ensuring patients who need to travel for care are able to access that care through easy referral pathways with known and reputable providers.”
For many US providers, the pandemic reinforced the notion that the international medical travel industry is cyclical and vulnerable to shocks, but can bounce back. The pandemic also highlighted the importance of the work that the international departments do.
So the U.S. is back in business with regards international travel and there are clear signs of a revival of the industry following the Biden administration’s announcement in September that it would lift restrictions on international travel to the US. Major airlines including United and Delta have reported significant increases in international bookings and airfare-tracking site Hopper said international flight searches to the US have more than quadrupled since the September.
This is welcome news for medical travellers who have had to put their travel plans on hold. The U.S. remains one of the world’s leading destinations for complex medical procedures and patients from around the globe can now again take advantage of their life-saving treatments.
References:
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/ea/requirements-for-air-travelers-to-the-us.html
