Standard rates set for Cebu's health and wellness services

MANILA, Philippines - In its effort to make Cebu the center for health and wellness in the Philippines, the Cebu Health and Wellness Council (CHWC) has set standard rates for medical tourists who avail of medical and vanity services in Cebu.

CHWC trustee Patria Aurora Roa said that Cebu has already responded to the suggestions made by potential foreign clients to set up standardized rates for all services included in the health and wellness packages offered through the CHWC members.

“There are different brackets that clients can choose from. We are already addressing the issue on standard rates,” Roa said in an interview.

With this, she projected that Cebu can easily take off as the health and wellness center in the Philippines, especially that some government agencies are also helping the private sector to push the success of Cebu becoming the hub of medical tourism in the Philippines.

Roa said that the primary target of the Cebu health and wellness players are the “balikbayans” who will become the “ambassadors” outside the Philippines, who will be spreading the news about Cebu’s medical services including vanity and dental.

At present, she said there are at least 10 packages available for tourists who are seeking medical and vanity services, to choose from. This already include; hotel accommodation, sight seeing tours, aside from the offering of the specified services chosen by a tourist, availing of the package.

Despite the slow movement of the industry, Roa said there is a big potential that Cebu could fast track this positioning starting this year, as the CHWC organization had been working hard to promote Cebu abroad, targeting initially the Filipinos working abroad.

So far, CHWH had been organizing trips to North America and Europe to promote Cebu as the health and wellness destination in the Philippines.

This year, Roa said the group is eyeing to penetrate the huge European market, specifically in Belgium, Amsterdam, Germany, and also the United Kingdom.

Earlier, Canadian Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines (CCCP) president Julian Payne said that aside from the problem of direct flight availability, foreign medical tourists are also concern of the unregulated medical fees and charges in the Philippines.

Regulation of medical fees, such as doctors’ professional fees, among others should be implemented. Otherwise, the Philippines will not be competitive in this aspect.

Payne said there are two things that the country has to work serious in order to attract foreign medical tourists, these are; to improve medical standard, and provides specialized medical services to cater to international tastes.

“Medical fees should be regulated,” he said adding that the structure of costing here is not uniform.

For foreigners, transparency is very important. Fees should be regulated, he reiterated.

One of the complaints of foreign medical tourists is that they have noticed that the charging scheme here depends on the financial status of a patient. More often, foreign patients are charged more than the regular fees, Payne said.

In Cebu, on the other hand, Roa said this particular problem had already been addressed.

CHWC projected at least to hit 520,000 health and wellness tourists to visit Cebu in the few months of 2011. This doesn’t include those visitors that primarily come to Cebu business and incorporated their travel activities to get medical and health services here.

So far, the most common services availed of foreigners and balikbayans are dental, and vanity services, Roa said adding that the Cebu Dental Association, which is also part of the CHWC, already established its own regulated professional fees depending on the services to be availed by a patient.— (FREEMAN)