In the last years, Medical tourism in Turkey saw big improvements generating millions of dollars every year. Thousands of international patients are traveling to Turkey to receive medical care. Turkey’s medical system has been providing excellence, efficiency and great hospitality since 2008.
Turkey holds the best health facilities thanks to a great monitoring from the Turkish Healthcare Tourism Development Council which was established in 2008 in Istanbul embracing 141 members. The Turkish health system is also supervised by the Ministry of Heath in Turkey and accredited by well-known international organizations, ranking the healthcare system in Turkey among the highest medical systems in the world. Hospitals are getting inspected twice every year by the Ministry of Health to protect patients’ safety and guarantee high standard services.
People who travel to Turkey for medical tourism are not only after plastic surgeries and dental care. There are several sectors that Turkey’s health system excels at such as cardiology, skin care, genetic services and most importantly transplantation. Statistics show that thousands of international patients are seeking hair transplantation in Turkey with up to 1,500 transplantation surgeries performed every day in different regions of Turkey. It became a prime location for men who are seeking hair transplantation.
Private institutions provide all the facilities needed for their patients to guarantee their comfort, such as transportation and hotel room reservations. Istanbul is proving to be among the top cities in Turkey providing healthcare tourism attracting thousands of international patients, followed by Bodrum, Ankara, Izmir and Bursa.
In 2018 about 1 million tourists visited Turkey to get healthcare, which is a massive 27.3% increase compared to 2017. Health officials declared that after analyzing the previous years’ statistics and because of the massive improvements that the Ministry of Health has been certifying, the number of tourists coming to Turkey for medical tourism will keep rising year after year.
The main reasons behind the tremendous upsurge in Healthcare tourism in Turkey is that it’s time and cost effective. Patients don’t have to wait for weeks to get their surgeries done, Turkish private hospitals provide high quality services with affordable prices allowing patients to get treated right away. Also many private institutions are benefitting from a tax free regulation allowing them to charge less than the private hospitals abroad. This alone encourages international patients to hop on a plane to come to Turkey and get treated right away.
The health minister announced that three large city hospitals will be launched this year in Turkey. These centers will provide the best medical quality services, latest equipment and best doctors. One of these city hospitals is called, Bilkent hospital in Ankara, which is considered the biggest hospital in Europe.
Many Middle Eastern countries such as, Libya, have low standard medical treatment facilities and because of that they prefer to come to Turkey to benefit from the high quality services that Turkish hospitals provide. Also many Europeans come to Turkey to ensure that their needs are met at an affordable cost.
Turkey’s great environment and diversity attracts the international patients and lures them to want to stay longer and to invest in a property for sale in Turkey or long-term rentals.
The effect of medical tourism has been constructive not only on the healthcare sector but on the whole economy. Turkey’s revenue in this sector is expected to rise in the coming years, the government is working on preparations to attract more patients and to improve the infrastructure in the hospitals, the medical facilities, and the health standards which is why the Turkish ministry of health has assigned a big budget for that.
As an outcome, the medical tourism sector is one of the most essential sectors for Turkey’s development plan by the year 2023.
The high demand for hospitals and medical facilities is driving prospects of more investments in turkey and presents more investment opportunities to foreign developers from all over the world.
Potential investors’ interest in the medical sector leads them to invest in other sectors as well. The significant number of new hotels, residential developments and luxurious complexes that are being established on a yearly basis are offering a variety of options for a lucrative long term investment.
