Medical Tourism Statistics: What the Numbers Actually Show in 2026

Roughly 1.4 million Americans now travel abroad for medical care each year, according to the CDC Yellow Book, 2026 edition. You'll see that number quoted everywhere, usually sitting next to an industry size in the tens of billions and a savings percentage that sounds too good to be real. Some of those figures hold up well. Others come from consultancies whose estimates for the very same year differ by more than double. This page gathers the numbers that come from someone who actually counted, with the source and year beside each one, and it says plainly where a figure is soft.

What counts as medical travel?

Medical tourism is the CDC's term for traveling to another country to get medical care. The Yellow Book notes that people go for lower prices, and some go to see a doctor who shares their culture or language.

That definition sounds simple, but every organization that publishes a number measures a slightly different thing. A government survey at the border counts trips where health was the main reason for travel. A hospital or clinic register counts patients, and one patient can make several trips. A survey of plastic surgeons counts procedures, which is a third unit again. So before you compare two numbers, check that they're counting the same thing. Mixing those units is where a lot of the confusion starts.

How many Americans go abroad for medical care each year?

About 1.4 million Americans travel internationally for medical care each year, according to the CDC Yellow Book (2026 edition). A population survey points the same way. In a study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology in 2021, 0.55% of 93,492 adults in the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System said they'd traveled abroad for care in the previous year.

That same BRFSS study by Stoney and Kozarsky (2021) is the best picture we have of where Americans actually go and what they get done. Mexico accounted for 41% of trips, far ahead of any other country, and dental care made up 55% of all treatments. It comes from a federal health survey, which makes it the closest thing to an official answer. We've broken those numbers down further in how many Americans travel abroad for medical care.

Canada is the other big North American source of travelers, and the trend there is steeper. The Fraser Institute's Leaving Canada for Medical Care report estimates that 105,529 Canadians left the country for treatment in 2025, up 66% over a decade. We look at what's behind that rise in care abroad for Canadians.

Which countries treat the most international patients?

Türkiye and South Korea publish the clearest official counts. The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) reported more than 1.5 million health tourists in 2024, bringing in over $3 billion. South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare counted 1,170,467 foreign patients from 202 countries in 2024, nearly double the roughly 610,000 it counted in 2023.

The Korean figures are worth a closer look because they show who's going and why. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare's 2025 release, the United States sent the third-largest group of patients, about 102,000 people or 8.7% of the total, behind Japan and China. Dermatology accounted for 56.6% of foreign patients and plastic surgery for 11.4%, so much of Korea's growth comes from skin treatments. If that's your interest, our guide to cosmetic surgery in Seoul goes further.

For cosmetic surgery specifically, the ISAPS Global Survey (2024) reports which countries see the highest share of patients coming from abroad: Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Colombia and Türkiye. We looked for an official 2024 count of international patients in Thailand and couldn't find one we could trace to a government source, so it's left out of the table below and we haven't filled the gap with a guess.

What do people travel abroad for?

For Americans, the answer is mostly teeth. Dental care made up 55% of treatments in the BRFSS study, and our dental implant cost comparison by country shows the per-arch and per-implant numbers side by side.

Cosmetic surgery is the other big category, and it's growing everywhere, at home included. ISAPS counted 17.4 million surgical and 20.5 million non-surgical cosmetic procedures performed by plastic surgeons worldwide in 2024. Eyelid surgery was the most common operation at more than 2.1 million. And the United States still performs more cosmetic procedures than any other country, 6,165,173 in 2024 by ISAPS's count, so most of the cosmetic surgery Americans have still happens at home.

Photo by Lumin Osity on Unsplash

How much do people actually save by going abroad?

Patients Beyond Borders, a long-running consumer guide to care abroad, publishes savings ranges against US prices by country. Its figures, cited widely since 2020, put typical savings at 40% to 65% in Mexico, 50% to 65% in Türkiye, 50% to 75% in Thailand and 30% to 45% in South Korea. Those are ranges across procedures, so your own number depends on what you're having done.

For context on the US side, national health spending reached $5.3 trillion in 2024, or $15,474 per person and 18.0% of GDP, according to the CMS National Health Expenditure data. Elective work that insurance won't touch lands entirely on the patient.

But the percentage applies to the quoted price, and the quote is where people get caught out. Flights and hotel nights sit outside it. So can scans taken on arrival, an extra night of recovery, the anesthesiologist's fee or a second trip for final teeth after implants have healed for a few months. With dental work, check whether a price is per arch (one jaw) or full mouth (both). If you book through JetWell, everything on your Care Plan is price-locked and anything not on it is extra, so you can see the gap before you go. You can ask Doc about your options and see what a plan would include for the work you want.

How big is the industry, really?

Nobody knows precisely. Commercial research firms put the 2025 global figure anywhere from $34.0 billion (Grand View Research) to $91.98 billion (Research and Markets), so the highest estimate is about 2.7 times the lowest. They each define the market differently.

Treat any single market-size figure as a rough signal that the sector is large and growing, and lean on government counts like TÜİK's or Korea's when you need a number you can defend.

What happens if something goes wrong after I'm home?

In the BRFSS study (Stoney and Kozarsky, 2021), about 5% of people who traveled for care said something went wrong afterward, and 67% of that group got treatment back in the US. The CDC advises lining up follow-up care before you leave.

The CDC's own case files show what those problems usually look like. A June 2026 study in Emerging Infectious Diseases reviewed requests for CDC investigative help from 2014 to 2024 and found 21 reports covering about 145 patients with infections or other bad outcomes after traveling for cosmetic procedures, at clinics both in the US and abroad. Twelve involved nontuberculous mycobacteria, and four of the investigations involved a patient's death.

Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are a family of bacteria, related to the ones that cause tuberculosis, that are common in the environment and can infect surgical wounds.

In 2023, CDC identified more than 200 US residents in 25 states and jurisdictions who were at risk of fungal meningitis after epidural anesthesia at two clinics in Matamoros, Mexico, according to its Health Alert Network advisory. Both clinics were closed on May 13, 2023. In the UK, a 2025 review by researchers at Cardiff and Bangor universities pooled 37 studies covering 655 patients treated by the NHS between 2011 and 2024 after surgery abroad, at a cost of £1,058 to £19,549 per patient.

These are counts of people who were hurt, and none of them gives you a rate, because nobody tracks how many procedures went well. What they do show is where the trouble tends to start. The CDC study traced gaps in environmental cleaning, protective equipment, hand hygiene and the reprocessing of surgical instruments. Our guides to what JCI accreditation checks and finding a US doctor for follow-up cover both, and protecting your money when you pay abroad covers deposits.

How to read a medical travel statistic

Before you repeat or rely on a number, run it through these checks:

1. Who counted it? A government agency or a peer-reviewed survey beats a clinic, an agency or a market-research firm.
2. What unit is it? Trips, patients and procedures aren't interchangeable.
3. Which direction? Inbound counts (patients arriving in Türkiye) and outbound counts (Americans leaving) can't be added together.
4. Which year? Korea's count nearly doubled between 2023 and 2024, so a two-year-old number can be badly out of date.
5. Per what? A dental price is usually per arch, and a savings range spans many procedures at once.

For the bigger picture on going abroad for care, start with our complete guide for Americans.