Tips for Making the Best Out of Your Medical Trip

It's not uncommon at all to take advantage of the trip to enjoy the local fiesta.

While I recommend traveling to another country to get medical care, I also warn people that doing so comes with a risk. Like with any medical procedure at home, a medical procedure aboard means that you have to be responsible for your own health and inform yourself fully about the risks, the costs, the procedure and the post-care.

Here are some tips that will help you avoid the most common mistakes that medical tourists make.

1.- Take into consideration the extra costs... and then add some padding.

In addition to the medical costs, be prepared to pay for taxis and food and some extra medication. If someone is coming with you, you'll have to pay for a hotel and meals. You'll also want to buy souvenirs for yourself or someone else.

You might have emergency costs as well, depending on how risky the procedure is.

In addition to all that, I strongly suggest some padding, just in case.

2.- What about your medical records?

Not all countries treat medical records in the same way. In some countries, it's your doctor who keeps them, in others, it's you. You have to inform yourself with the doctor or the hospital in the other country about how the records will be handled.

You may need to have your medical records translated to Spanish, or viceversa.

3.- Inform yourself about the procedure, the risks and the post-care.

You should do this even when having a procedure at home. In the case of post-care, you have to decide beforehand if you're going to have it abroad or back home.

4.- Prevent or prepare for illnesses abroad.

It's not uncommon to get stomachaches if it's your first time abroad, since your body isn't used to the food. Different climates or altitudes may also give you a cold or a headache. I recommend taking  basic medications for common ailments with you. You should also get all the recommended vaccines for the country you're going to.

Better yet, make your body more resistant to illnesses by eating well and stopping smoking and drinking.

5.- Think about what you'd do in case something goes wrong.

I'm saying this not because you're going on a medical trip abroad. Even at home, many patients just don't think about how to handle emergencies. What's the worst case scenario? How likely is it and what will happen if such a scenario comes true?

Although I don't like to talk about death, in some circumstances, it's a possibility, and after all, it's part of life. If you're getting a life or death procedure abroad because you can't afford it at home, make arrangements and important decisions, like whether you want to donate your organs or not, ahead of time.

Of course, there are many other factors to take into consideration. Remember, it's your responsibility to be informed and to make the best possible decisions about your health.

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Robert Ervin is a freelancer who writes about healthcare, medical tourism, and living in Mexico.

If you're considering traveling to Mexico for healthcare or retiring in Mexico, you may want to get yourself a copy of The English's Speaker's Guide to Doctors and Hospitals in Mexico, in order to find a good doctor or hospital in the main towns and cities of Mexico, or The English Speaker's Guide to Medical Care in Mexico, to understand how the Mexican healthcare system works. 

Attack of the One-Inch Scorpion

Today's post comes from an article that Monica Rix Paxson wrote months after her Christmas emergency. She's the author of The English Speaker's Guide to Medical Care in Mexico.


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The other day, I wrote about how I had to go to the Emergency Room in Mexico on Christmas. Which was great because I was more prepared when half a year later, I had an encounter with a scorpion sting.

Scorpions can be found anywhere in the American continent, yes, even Canada. And where I live, in central Mexico, they're rather common. They are reddish and measure about an inch. Fortunately, they are not fatal. They do show up in the house and everybody is adviced to shake out clothes and shoes before putting them on.

The ones around my house like the kitchen sink for some reason. That's why I always watch out for one before doing the dishes, except that day I was absent-minded and while I was pulling out a plate, I felt it.

It was extremely painful and it burned. I looked at my finger and I wasn't able to see anything. However, I could feel the intense pain. I didn't see the scorpion but I knew it had to be one. I had to do something fast.

Only around 35 of the currently known 2,000 species of scorpions are lethal enough through their poison. The danger is actually the allergic reaction and the anaphylactic shock. That's why you should seek medical attention right away. I took an antihistamine that I keep around precisely in case this happened. Later on, the doctors who treated me told me that it doesn't do anything against the poison. However, it can delay the reaction and buy you time at the expense of making you wait for a longer period of time at the hospital while it wears off.

Speaking of hospitals, there isn't one where I live. Instead of making the trip to the city, we thought it was a better idea to go to a small clinic we'd driven by many times before. We thought they would have more experience with this type of problems.

It was a public clinic, run by the government sponsored Seguro Popular program that gives limited but free medical care to people who aren't covered by any other type of health care.

As you can imagine, this means the poorest citizens, the people who can't afford the minimum of care and for whom family planning, child care, and treatment for common diseases (like a cold) are just out of their reach. I encourage people who read my book “The English Speaker's Guide to Medical Care in Mexico” to use any other health care system so that these resources are really used only on the ones who need it the most. With one exception: emergency care. And it was my case.

I've often heard that public hospitals and clinics are overcrowded and that you have to wait hours to get treatment. However, the building was modern-looking and no one else was there. In minutes, a doctor checked me and told me to wait for a while to see if I developed any reaction. Every 15 minutes, another doctor or a nurse would come and ask me again and told me to report any changes.

Sure enough, after an hour, I felt it in my nose. It was like a “sneeze” feeling except I didn't want to sneeze. That's what the doctors were waiting for and they immediately administered me the anti-venom in a clean bed in a white ward. The feeling went away very soon and I could go home afterwards.

During the research I did for my book, I learned that a small vial of anti-venom in the United States, which has saved countless lives, costs about $10,000 dollars. If you need more vials, the price increases accordingly. Adding other expenses, which is typical, you can end up in deep debt. A woman in Phoenix recently needed 2 vials and the total fee was $83,000 dollars. Her insurance company only paid some of it, and she had to come up with $25,500 from her own pocket.

In any hospital in Mexico, the price for such a vial would cost about $100 dollars.

However, because I was treated in this clinic aimed at helping extremely poor citizens, my total bill amounted to... zero dollars. They didn't accept any money donations, so I went back and bought them a cake the next day.

Incredible, isn't it? Even I find it hard to believe that the US health care system is so broken that even if you have insurance, you still have to pay a hefty amount for a life-saving vial. Even the poorest of the poor in Mexico get better treatment than that.


Want to know more? Read about the first implantation of an artificial heart in Mexico.
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Robert Ervin is a freelancer who writes about healthcare, medical tourism, and living in Mexico.

If you're considering traveling to Mexico for healthcare or retiring in Mexico, you may want to get yourself a copy of The English's Speaker's Guide to Doctors and Hospitals in Mexico, in order to find a good doctor or hospital in the main towns and cities of Mexico, or The English Speaker's Guide to Medical Care in Mexico, to understand how the Mexican healthcare system works. 

Are You Prepared for an Emergency in Another Country?

Today's post is an experience from Monica Rix Paxson, author of The English Speaker's Guide to Medical Care in Mexico.


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Emergencies are always a surprise. If we could see them coming, we would prepare for them, but we don't by definition. Many people in the US only know they have to call 911 and that's it. Also, ambulances are available pretty much anywhere (although their prices, as you find later in the hospital, are ridiculously expensive). Nevertheless, you probably feel confident that that call will keep you safe.

Mexico is a different country, and things work differently here. Not worse, just differently. That's why it's important not to assume that things will work like at home. I say this because of a recent event in my life: I found myself  in a medical emergency. Although I wrote a book about health care in Mexico, I still made assumptions that weren't right. Here's the story:

Like many people, I ate much more than I should have at Christmas. Later on, I got very sick. At around 3 AM, I knew I needed to go to a doctor. I could walk, so we drove from our little pueblo to the city, which is 40 minutes away.

There's a small hospital and a doctor that we usually go to. It has at most 15 beds, which is not unusual at all in Mexico. However, it has an ER and a doctor on duty. Because we've been there before and we liked the treatment, it was the logical choice.

However, Navidad is much more important in Mexico. Mexicans spend much more time with their families and they often go on vacation, which means that many businesses are closed. The small city we went to was practically a ghost town so we arrived to the hospital in a very short amount of time.

BUT, it turned out the hospital was closed! The doors were covered with metal shutters and the windows were licked with iron bars.

Apparently, they didn't have any patients, so they decided to go home and spend time with their families.

While I had an emergecy, it wasn't life-threatening. But I was scared to be on the street in the middle of the night, in a deserted city with no idea about what to do.

Fortunately, my partner knew the city and after asking around (how he was able to find people at 4 AM, I don't know) he knew where to take me. We arrived at a larger hospital and when its gates opened, an security guard welcomed us and showed us where to park and where to go.

The emergency room was impeccably clean, well-litted and well-equipped. The doctor saw me inmedately. She took my vitals and then made a diagnosed and wrote a prescription. She was very professional and compassionate about it and she made me feel reassured.

So, what was the cost of this emergecy treatment? About 25 dollars. But the icing on the cake was that the doctor told me that if I wanted to buy the medicine for cheaper, I should go to a 24 hour pharmacy that was close to the hospital. She assured me that the medicine would be exactly the same. And it cost me only 4 dollars.

We really didn't have any problems, just assumptions on how things worked. Now I know that public hospitals are always open but private ones may not, specially small ones.

I also learned that I have to get to know the local emergency phone numbers in Mexico, where there isn't a national 911, the numbers of public and private ambulance services, the location of hospitals and whether they are open or closed on holidays. This now makes me much better prepared in case of another emergency.

Want to know more? Compare the prices of cosmetic surgery in Mexico vs the US.

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Robert Ervin is a freelancer who writes about healthcare, medical tourism, and living in Mexico.

If you're considering traveling to Mexico for healthcare or retiring in Mexico, you may want to get yourself a copy of The English's Speaker's Guide to Doctors and Hospitals in Mexico, in order to find a good doctor or hospital in the main towns and cities of Mexico, or The English Speaker's Guide to Medical Care in Mexico, to understand how the Mexican healthcare system works.