Medical tourism is a large and growing sector within Thailand’s extensive tourism and healthcare industries. The country is extremely attractive to potential medical tourists and international patients for a number of important reasons: it has many internationally accredited hospitals, including 30 JCI-accredited hospitals; it has experienced, often Western-trained medical professionals; it has the latest medical technology; and, it has significantly lower costs of treatment when compared to corresponding procedures in the West. Taken together, all these factors—plus the country’s reputation as a popular tourist destination—have made Thailand one of the world’s most popular medical tourism destinations.[34]
Some of the primary destinations for medical tourism in Thailand are Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hua Hin, Koh Samui, Pattaya/Chonburi, and Phuket.[35]
Thailand has the largest private hospital in Asia: Bumrungrad International Hospital.[36] Thailand was also the first Asian country to achieve the prestigious[citation needed] Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation in 2002. As of September 2013, 30 hospitals were JCI-accredited.[37]