title: Inbound medical tourism to Barbados: a qualitative examination of local lawyers' prospective legal and regulatory concerns.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Enabled by globalizing processes such as trade liberalization, medical tourism is a practice that involves patients' intentional travel to privately obtain medical care in another country. Empirical legal research on this issue is limited and seldom based on the perspectives of destination countries receiving medical tourists. We consulted with diverse lawyers from across Barbados to explore their views on the prospective legal and regulatory implications of the developing medical tourism industry in the country.
  
  
  METHODS
  We held a focus group in February 2014 in Barbados with lawyers from across the country. Nine lawyers with diverse legal backgrounds participated. Focus group moderators summarized the study objective and engaged participants in identifying the local implications of medical tourism and the anticipated legal and regulatory concerns. The focus group was transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Five dominant legal and regulatory themes were identified through analysis: (1) liability; (2) immigration law; (3) physician licensing; (4) corporate ownership; and (5) reputational protection.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Two predominant legal and ethical concerns associated with medical tourism in Barbados were raised by participants and are reflected in the literature: the ability of medical tourists to recover medical malpractice for adverse events; and the effects of medical tourism on access to health care in the destination country. However, the participants also identified several topics that have received much less attention in the legal and ethical literature. Overall this analysis reveals that lawyers, at least in Barbados, have an important role to play in the medical tourism sector beyond litigation - particularly in transactional and gatekeeper capacities. It remains to be seen whether these findings are specific to the ecology of Barbados or can be extrapolated to the legal climate of other medical tourism destination countries.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada. crooks@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: Valorie A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Crooks
authors.affiliation: Harvard Law School, Harvard University, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA. igcohen@law.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: I Glenn
authors.initials: IG
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, Canada. kaa4@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: Krystyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Adams
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada. rwa13@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Whitmore
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada. jrmorgan@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Morgan
mesh_terms: D001460:Barbados; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D033161:Government Regulation; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D033241:Lawyers / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008318:Malpractice; D057193:Medical Tourism / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D036301:Qualitative Research