Crooks Valorie A, Cohen I Glenn, Adams Krystyna, Whitmore Rebecca, Morgan Jeffrey
Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada.
Harvard Law School, Harvard University, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA.
BMC Health Serv Res. 2015 Jul 28;15:291. doi: 10.1186/s12913-015-0948-3.
Enabled by globalizing processes such as trade liberalization, medical tourism is a practice that involves patients' intentional travel to privately obtain medical care in another country. Empirical legal research on this issue is limited and seldom based on the perspectives of destination countries receiving medical tourists. We consulted with diverse lawyers from across Barbados to explore their views on the prospective legal and regulatory implications of the developing medical tourism industry in the country.
We held a focus group in February 2014 in Barbados with lawyers from across the country. Nine lawyers with diverse legal backgrounds participated. Focus group moderators summarized the study objective and engaged participants in identifying the local implications of medical tourism and the anticipated legal and regulatory concerns. The focus group was transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically.
Five dominant legal and regulatory themes were identified through analysis: (1) liability; (2) immigration law; (3) physician licensing; (4) corporate ownership; and (5) reputational protection.
Two predominant legal and ethical concerns associated with medical tourism in Barbados were raised by participants and are reflected in the literature: the ability of medical tourists to recover medical malpractice for adverse events; and the effects of medical tourism on access to health care in the destination country. However, the participants also identified several topics that have received much less attention in the legal and ethical literature. Overall this analysis reveals that lawyers, at least in Barbados, have an important role to play in the medical tourism sector beyond litigation - particularly in transactional and gatekeeper capacities. It remains to be seen whether these findings are specific to the ecology of Barbados or can be extrapolated to the legal climate of other medical tourism destination countries.
在贸易自由化等全球化进程的推动下，医疗旅游是一种患者有意前往他国自费获取医疗服务的行为。关于这一问题的实证法律研究有限，且很少基于接待医疗游客的目的地国家的视角。我们咨询了巴巴多斯各地的不同律师，以探讨他们对该国发展中的医疗旅游行业潜在的法律和监管影响的看法。
2014年2月，我们在巴巴多斯与全国各地的律师举行了一次焦点小组会议。九名具有不同法律背景的律师参与其中。焦点小组主持人总结了研究目标，并让参与者确定医疗旅游对当地的影响以及预期的法律和监管问题。焦点小组会议内容逐字记录，并进行了主题分析。
通过分析确定了五个主要的法律和监管主题：（1）责任；（2）移民法；（3）医生执照；（4）企业所有权；（5）声誉保护。
参与者提出了与巴巴多斯医疗旅游相关的两个主要法律和伦理问题，这些问题也反映在文献中：医疗游客因不良事件获得医疗事故赔偿的能力；以及医疗旅游对目的地国家医疗服务可及性的影响。然而，参与者还确定了一些在法律和伦理文献中较少受到关注的主题。总体而言，这一分析表明，至少在巴巴多斯，律师在医疗旅游领域除了诉讼之外还可发挥重要作用——特别是在交易和把关方面。这些发现是否仅适用于巴巴多斯的情况，还是可以推广到其他医疗旅游目的地国家的法律环境，仍有待观察。
