Jones C A, Keith L G
Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, Baltimore, Maryland 21205-1996, USA.
Int J Fertil Womens Med. 2006 Nov-Dec;51(6):251-5.
Medical tourism, a term that also can be used to describe medical outsourcing, is characterized by travel away from one's home region to procure treatment in another. It may take one of two forms: obligatory or elective. The former occurs when necessary treatments are unavailable or illegal in the place of origin. The latter includes elective and medically indicated procedures that, although available at the place of origin, may be delivered more quickly or in a more cost-effective manner in another location. Reproductive outsourcing is a special form of medical tourism that has quickly become an important area of present-day medicine because the changes of the last four decades have left all but the most advanced fertility centers breathless as they try to adjust their treatment protocols in effective and ethical manners. Legal and policy limitations have created a global environment where, in a rising number of instances, individuals and couples must travel elsewhere to procure fertility procedures that are unavailable back home. With low cost airfares to and from America, a growing number of "medical cartographers" have set out to map which places are the "best" (in terms of cost, effectiveness and timeliness), for what procedures, and for whom. On the other hand, physicians, legal experts and policy makers have only begun to shape how government and health care agencies should formally guide or regulate medical tourism. In doing so, a number of factors may challenge the limits of ethics, policy and legality in this most important trend in modern medicine.
医疗旅游，这个术语也可用于描述医疗外包，其特点是离开自己的家乡地区到另一个地方接受治疗。它可能有两种形式：强制性的或选择性的。前者发生在必要的治疗在原籍地无法获得或不合法的情况下。后者包括选择性的和有医学指征的手术，这些手术虽然在原籍地可以进行，但在另一个地方可能会更快或更具成本效益地进行。生殖外包是医疗旅游的一种特殊形式，它迅速成为当代医学的一个重要领域，因为过去四十年来的变化让除了最先进的生育中心之外的所有机构都喘不过气来，因为它们试图以有效和符合道德的方式调整治疗方案。法律和政策限制创造了一个全球环境，在越来越多的情况下，个人和夫妇必须前往其他地方接受家乡无法获得的生育程序。由于往返美国的机票价格低廉，越来越多的“医疗地图绘制者”开始绘制哪些地方（在成本、有效性和及时性方面）对于哪些程序以及哪些人来说是“最佳”的。另一方面，医生、法律专家和政策制定者才刚刚开始思考政府和医疗保健机构应如何正式指导或规范医疗旅游。在这样做的过程中，一些因素可能会挑战现代医学这一最重要趋势中的伦理、政策和合法性界限。
