By our Staff Writer
Medical Tourism Packages (MTP), a Colombia-based cross-border patient coordination firm, announced expansion of its services to residents of the United States and the Caribbean seeking affordable access to elective and non-emergency medical procedures.
The company is adding dedicated coordination paths from Caribbean hubs into JCI-accredited hospital networks across four Latin American countries – Panama, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica.
The expansion, according to MTP founders, is to address the existing market gaps in services available to patients from the US and Caribbean. US patients typically pay out-of-pocket rates 50 to 80 percent above regional pricing for a range of procedures, including dental restoration, orthopaedic surgery, bariatric procedures, and cosmetic surgery – categories that most insurance carriers exclude entirely.
For Caribbean residents, the problem takes a different form. Domestic healthcare systems across the region lack the specialized capacity for many procedures, and the default referral path has historically routed patients through high-cost US providers.
Craig Dempsey, Co-Founder, Medical Tourism Packages, said Americans pay premiums that have no relationship to the underlying cost of care, while Caribbean patients face a referral system that defaults to the most expensive option on the map. “The same procedure at a JCI-accredited hospital in Bogota or San Jose can cost sixty to eighty percent less than what a patient pays at home. Our job is to make that path safe, transparent, and legally defensible,” he said.
MTP said it operates strictly as a patient coordinator. The company does not own clinics or practice medicine. Its role is to vet providers, structure the logistical framework, and manage the coordination process, while keeping all medical decisions between the patient and their treating physician.
Patient agreements operate under Panama law, with CeCAP arbitration as the designated dispute resolution forum.
The Colombian medical tourism market, estimated at $235 million in 2024, is projected to grow to $287 million by 2027, driven in large part by patients seeking alternatives to US-priced care.
