The number of people looking for medical services abroad is growing steadily. Poland is becoming a very important center of dental tourism in Europe. The patients are driven mostly by the lower prices of treatment.
According to the 2010 analysis provided by the global consulting company Frost & Sullivan the value of medical tourism should reach 100 billion dollars by 2012. The research of Global Industry Analysts (GIA) on the other hand suggests that this value should rise to $168 billion in 2015.
GIA report shows that medical tourism is a segment of tourism that is growing steadily, despite the financial crisis. Aging, extending life expectancy and the growing general health awareness are the factors that increase the demand for high quality medical services. The countries with the greatest medical tourism potential are located in Asia and South America. The most popular medical tourism destinations in Europe are Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania and Estonia.
The most favorite branches that the tourists are looking for are plastic surgery, cardiology and dentistry. Dental tourism is exactly the branch that makes Poland one of the most popular medical tourism destinations in Europe.
Why are the people needing dental treatment attracted by Poland? First of all, it is the quality of services and the prices. Polish clinics and doctors are prepared to provide high quality services to foreign patients for much cheaper prices than in the West European countries.
For dental treatment the patients pay only 30% of the price they would have to pay in their home countries. Low prices go hand in hand with high quality. A study conducted in 2008 including 650 British respondents who were treated abroad showed a satisfaction of 91.2%. Poland was also among the countries the people went for treatment to.
According to the "Dental Health Magazine" central Europe with its hundreds years of history of dentistry and best-trained dentists in the world is the best place for having a dental treatment.
Dental tourism is also very profitable for Polish dentists, because the foreign patients usually pay cash. In UK for instance the health system forces the doctors to simple solutions as removing a teeth and replacing it with prosthesis. The reason is that these treatments are paid from the insurance. More complicated treatments are not. Therefore it can be claimed that teeth are being removed in the UK and treated in Poland. That is also one of the reasons why British patients look for treatment abroad, where they can decide together with the doctor about the treatment and the final price for it.
Foreign patients traveling to Poland for dental treatment come usually from the western European countries, from the UK and Germany the most. There are also patients from Canada, France, Australia, USA, Norway, Switzerland and Italy, reported Tur-info.pl. Medical tourism experts admit that the majority of these tourists are of Polish origin.