The facilities would make any NHS manager envious. The doctors are experts with world-class success rates. The prices are often half what you’d pay at home. Why, then, are more of us not travelling to Poland to have routine medical treatments carried out?
For several years expat Poles have been returning home to get expensive dental work, plastic surgery and procedures such as hip replacements done at 30% to 60% of the cost they would pay in their adopted country.
Now a Polish government-backed initiative is promoting medical tourism into the country, targeting non-Poles from across the world, particularly those in Scandinavia, Germany, eastern Europe – and the UK. Those behind the plan hope Poland’s location at the heart of Europe – along with its plethora of low-cost flights, cheap accommodation, and attractive tourist cities such as Krakow – will be enough to tip the increasingly competitive battle for medical tourism in Poland’s favour.
The EU directive that came into force last year giving consumers the right to use health services in other European countries will only further its bid to become the medical tourism centre of Europe, officials hope.
At the very swish Dentestetica dental clinic on the outskirts of Krakow, one of the owners, Dr Krzysztof Gonczowski, tells his multilingual staff that their mission is to “drill, fill, and bill”. He has developed a one-stop-shop business model that other Polish clinics are increasingly adopting.
His clinic is packed with the very latest equipment that makes your correspondent’s Hertfordshire NHS dentist look like something out of the dark ages – equipment, says Gonczowski, that enables his staff to offer the most sophisticated procedures in a five-day window. Clients from abroad typically save £2,500, making the £100 Ryanair flight look like an incidental cost, Guardian informs.
