Vietnam’s medical tourism earned about US$700 million in 2024, and its government expects the figure to reach US$4 billion by 2033, The Star reported. That would mean average growth of 18 per cent a year, faster than the wider market. The Malaysian daily set the forecast against a global medical tourism market it valued at around US$100 billion in 2024, growing at 15 to 25 per cent a year.
Vietnam is the fast riser in that field rather than the big earner. South Korea draws up to US$4.3 billion a year from cancer care and cosmetic surgery, the paper said, and Japan about US$13 billion from a mix of onsen wellness and medical treatment. Thailand earns between US$600 and US$700 million a year, and Malaysia around US$1.7 billion on prices it put at 30 to 50 per cent below many rivals. Vietnam’s pitch is the familiar one of cost.
Organ transplants, cardiovascular procedures, in-vitro fertilisation and aesthetic dentistry are now performed in Vietnam at 20 to 30 per cent of the price charged in richer countries, The Star reported. A dental implant runs about US$1,000 to US$1,200 there against an estimated US$5,000 in the United States, the paper said. That is the kind of gap that has already drawn foreign patients to Vietnamese dental clinics.
The government makes it policy
What is new is that Hanoi is treating the trade as strategy rather than accident. Tran Van Thuan, Deputy Minister of Health, called medical tourism “a strategic direction that combines high-quality healthcare with appealing travel experiences”, The Star reported. His ministry is drafting a national plan to promote it. The plan pairs hospitals with tourism, finance and immigration, the paper said, and packages short medical stays, fertility treatment, cosmetic surgery, dental work and rehabilitation into offers sold through travel agencies at home and abroad.
The measurable part of the plan is accreditation. Vietnam is building national quality criteria for hospitals that treat foreign patients, The Star reported, benchmarked against the Joint Commission International standard the industry uses as a credential. It aims to have at least 15 hospitals certified to that standard or an equivalent by 2030, five of them public. That target is the one a patient or an insurer can check. A market forecast is a projection; an accredited-hospital count is a fact that either exists in 2030 or does not.
Vietnam already draws patients from Europe, Asia and North America for oncology, cardiology, orthopaedics and ophthalmology, the paper reported. Officials argue the appeal now rests on clinical skill and modern facilities as much as on price. Ha Anh Duc, who heads the ministry’s Medical Services Administration, made that case, though the claim runs ahead of the accreditation the country is still assembling. Vietnam’s own plan concedes the point: it lists visa rules, cross-border insurance payment, health-data connectivity and language support as the parts still to be built.
A forecast against a base
There is a standing way to weigh a story like this, and it turns on the distance between the announcement and the capacity. That US$700 million from 2024 is a measured base. The US$4 billion pencilled in for 2033 is a forecast, and forecasts of this shape are cheap to publish and slow to prove. Between the two sits the work the plan describes: the accredited hospitals, the insurance rails, the visa arrangements. Whether Vietnam closes that distance is the whole question, and the accreditation count is the nearest checkable marker of it.
Cost arbitrage is a durable driver, not a passing one. A country that treats a dental implant at a fifth of the American price will keep drawing price-led patients whatever its accreditation, because the saving is real and easy to grasp. Harder to win are the patients choosing a destination for a cancer programme or a transplant, where the decision rides on outcomes and credentials rather than on the bill. Those are the patients the accreditation target is meant to reassure. Vietnam’s forecast assumes it can move up that ladder within a decade.
The ambition is not this report’s alone to name. That same US$4 billion figure and national-plan language have appeared as Vietnam has set out its 2033 target and drafted its medical tourism plan toward 2030. That places The Star’s account inside a run of government statements rather than a single fresh disclosure. The consistency helps its credibility; it also means the numbers are the state’s own, and the arrivals that would confirm them have not yet been reported.
What to watch
The tests are dated. Whether Vietnam reaches 15 internationally accredited hospitals by 2030, five of them public, will show whether the accreditation drive is real or aspirational. Whether the national medical tourism plan is published and funded, rather than described, will show whether the strategy has left the drafting stage. Whether foreign-patient arrivals and revenue climb from the 2024 base toward the US$4 billion forecast will show whether the projection was a plan or a wish. Until the accredited count moves, Vietnam’s medical tourism is a strong cost story with a government forecast attached.
