News coverage can make — or break — the medical travel business of a doctor, a hospital or even a country. Reports of poor health care abroad — or reports of bad results in otherwise good health care — can have a significant impact on medical travel decisions.
One can imagine that the news media coverage in 2004 of illnesses allegedly connected to cosmetic surgery done in the Dominican Republic might have led to a significant decline in the number of people going to that country for procedures.
Chapter 2 Page 2 | News Gets Around
As I have noted, however, the story was short-lived and in this particular case, may have done more to publicize the availability of inexpensive cosmetic surgery in the Dominican Republic than it did to convince prospective patients of danger! More on that in the next post …
