Costa Rica HealthCare

Costa Rica cutting through the red tape of health care developments

The Costa Rican government is promoting a Costa Rica health care assistance plan to help developers build projects centered on Costa Rica health care facilities for foreign retirees. The help is in the form of facilitating the processes at the different ministries involved with health care related property investments.

New property developments would offer clusters of Costa Rica health care services, including nursing and research facilities, catering to senior citizens looking for an inexpensive alternative to medical care in their own countries

In the wake the global economic slowdown, Costa Rica health care centers are an opportunity for developers to “change strategy,” Minister for Competitiveness and Regulatory Improvement George Woodbridge told La Prensa.

Retirement communities generate “two to three times” the revenue of traditional tourism and real estate projects, Woodbridge said. A population of 10,000 retirees could produce 40,000 jobs and $340 million in foreign exchange, the government estimates.

Costa Rica Health Care for Everyone

But development for this demographic does not mean the general population will be excluded. While the motivation for investing in the Costa Rica health care infrastructure is based on attracting the US retirement population, all other residents whether on vacation or living here can use the same Costa Rican healthcare facilities for themselves. Once an infrastructure is in place, along with the processes for getting permission from the Costa Rican government to build and offer health care services, many other health related companies will begin investing in Costa Rica. Right now, to open a health care related business the required red-tape process is choking these investments and now it looks that the Costa Rica government will do its part to alleviate this.

Last year, medical tourism attracted 30,000 visitors to Costa Rica, according to government data. That number is expected to increase as health care costs continue to rise. The U.S. is expected to generate 1.3 million medical tourists in 2011, according to a report by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, which ranks Costa Rica HealthCare in the top 10 destinations for medical tourism.

Until recently, most of the traffic in the past has been young people looking for cosmetic surgery and dental work, not seniors, Deloitte says.

“With health care at the center of attention in the U.S. this concept could certainly gain ground if implemented properly,” Panama developer Sam Taliaferro notes in his Panama Investor Blog. “If Obamacare gets legs one area that you can be sure will be left out in the cold is alternative health care practitioners. I bet they will head south with technology and skills.”

(For the record, the World Health Organization ranks Costa Rica’s health care system at 36th in the world, one spot ahead of the United States.)

Based on post here

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