**Low-Cost Health/Medical Tourism of Italians**

Tullio Romita and Antonella Perri

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.69954

#### **Abstract**

In Chapter 5 "Assessment of Avoidable Mortality Concepts in the European Union Coun‐ tries, Their Benefits and Limitations," the authors compare the impact of four lists of causes of death on the age-standardized amenable death rates across the European Union countries in 2014 by using statistical methods. They conclude that the structure of diseases and the age limits influence the value of standardized amenable death rates and hence it is useful to de‐ velop the concept of amenable mortality at the national level in the light of actual availabili‐

In Chapter 6 "The Efficiency of Post‐Communist Countries' Health Systems," the authors demonstrate the study of the health systems in 28 post-communist countries of the former Eastern bloc in order to determine the efficiency of the analyzed systems. The used method is the so-called method of data envelopment analysis (DEA). Recommendations are formu‐ lated, and projections are presented for the inefficient countries, that is, those countries that were in the Soviet sphere of influence after the Second World War, so that they can achieve

Chapter 7 "Health Support in the Palm of Your Hand: The Role of Technology in Achieving Health Goals" reviews how Smartphone apps and social network sites are being used by individuals who want to take care of their health, finding suggestions for the individuals who are using digital technologies in order to improve their well-being. It also shows how specific social marketing campaigns can be designed to influence healthcare behavior for particular individuals, including health promotion and interventions to help individuals

In Chapter 8 "Universal Health Coverage and Environmental Health: An Investigation in Decreasing Communicable and Chronic Disease by Including Environmental Health in UHC," the authors demonstrate how by implementing country-specific universal healthcare (UHC) approaches, focusing on sufficient government spending on healthcare (including training healthcare professionals) and engaging public-private partnerships to successfully target environmental health at the community level, universal healthcare can be achieved.

**Ubaldo Comite**

Benevento, Italy

Department of Business and Law University "Giustino Fortunato"

such health results as in the case of the most developed European countries.

ty of medical skills and effective treatments in the country.

VIII Preface

achieve personal goals and improve the quality of their life.

In recent years, becoming a form of spatial mobility of people is mainly called "medical tourism or health tourism". In Italy the adoption of the expression "turismo sanitario" is often used as an international expression synonymous with "medical tourism or health tourism": this situation raises a number of conceptual problems. In fact, the Italian public health service is one of the most developed in the world and is distinguished by many nations to the fact to offer its citizens free of charge and many health care services. In this situation, the Italian citizen in need of medical care is not convenient to travel to other places and is not obliged to do so. In fact, the Italian citizen tends to move for medical and health care that the Italian public health service does not deliver at no charge: such as dental care, we will deal with this case illustrating some examples of dental tourism low cost of the Italians. However, from our point of view, tourism period may be coupled to the trips to the health or well-being only in cases where the journey is "voluntary." All this will be discussed in this paper.

**Keywords:** turismo sanitario, health care and low cost, health and holiday

### **1. Introduction**

Expressions like medical tourism or health tourism are very widespread nowadays and for the past 10 years are used to indicate the geographical (territorial) mobility of people moving around the world looking at this way of meeting together the motivations and needs that deal with health and well-being, with needs related recreation, knowledge, and holidays. This kind of mobility has grown more and more over time due to the (considerable)

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opportunity of visibility by World Wide Web about global health opportunities. In fact, due to World Wide Web, people have the possibility to communicate in real time and the ability to move faster and faster and economically in space, especially through low-cost air transport.

In the contest of health and wellness, there is a real competition between touristic destinations that are increasing their product offerings in order to gain significant shares of this type of tourism market.

However, within the analysis and study of the phenomenon, the first difficulties refer to the theoretical and conceptual problems it generates, especially in the Italian case, the use of the term "health tourism." In this work, we will analyze this particular issue and the low-cost medical tourism of Italians.1
