The consensus of all stakeholders on the supply side of medical tourism, as well as the relevant ministries responsible for regulating this activity, namely the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Tourism, as well as professional chambers, is the most significant and I believe a major step we have achieved at the recently concluded Second Conference on Medical Tourism in Opatija.
This was stated by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Miljenko Bura, President of the Organizing Committee of the Association for the Development of Medical Tourism.
Namely, the biggest obstacle to development is the legislation that separately regulates medical and tourism activities, thereby hindering their connection, so for example, spas or specialized hospitals cannot place their surplus capacities on the legal tourist market. The growing global medical tourism industry has opened a new situation that needs to be adapted to, and representatives of the relevant ministries have therefore announced that they will complete this task by the end of this year, either in the form of laws or regulations.
At the conference, numerous domestic and foreign experts spoke on this current topic and the growing industry, such as Damir Novotny, an independent economic analyst, Prof. Dr. Mate Bartolucija from the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb, Keith Pollard, founder of Treatment Abroad, one of the most significant online portals for advertising and informing about services in medical tourism, and Dr. Uwe Klein, the main organizer of the European Conference on Medical Tourism, which will be held next week in Venice.
