Why Canadians are looking abroad

More Canadians are looking beyond borders for specialty care, and the reasons aren't hard to find. The Fraser Institute's 2025 physician survey put the median wait from GP referral to treatment at 28.6 weeks - the second-longest wait on record - with 15.3 weeks of that just to see a specialist. For some specialties, like neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery, the total wait runs closer to a year. Add a rare diagnosis or a condition that needs a level of sub-specialization simply not available at home, and the instinct to look elsewhere becomes urgent, not optional.

Europe has become a natural answer. Germany alone treats more than 250,000 foreign patients a year across its university medical centres and specialty clinics, and countries across the continent - France, the UK, Spain, and beyond - are recognized for renowned specialists, advanced research, and strong clinical outcomes across oncology, cardiology, orthopedics, neurology, and fertility medicine. Specialty clinics in particular now account for the largest share of the global medical travel market, prized for personalized care, shorter waits, and access to highly specialized procedures.

And the economics surprise many patients: European specialty care typically costs a fraction of comparable treatment in the United States - with transparent, all-in quotes rather than an open-ended bill.

The part most people miss 

Access to a good clinic is not the same as access to the right clinic. The single biggest risk in medical travel isn't the flight or the paperwork - it's the mismatch: the patient who lands in the right country but the wrong specialist's office.

Even when a diagnosis is correct, the specialist treating you might not be the right one for your specific case. A general orthopedic surgeon and a surgeon who's performed a specific reconstruction hundreds of times aren't interchangeable - even if both work at well-regarded clinics. That gap is easy to miss from outside a system you don't know, in a language you don't speak, evaluating clinics from a website rather than a referral you trust.

Fit isn't the only thing that can fall apart, either. Continuity of care is one of the most consistently cited risks in medical travel - once treatment ends, there's often no coordination between the international provider and your care team back home, so follow-up gets left to chance.

Where RCM Health fits in

This is the gap RCM Health's European specialty clinic packages are built to close. Rather than a patient researching clinics alone from a hospital's marketing page, RCM matches the individual to the clinic and specialist suited to their specific condition, history, and goals - then coordinates everything needed for treatment to actually begin once they arrive.

RCM Health works with top hospitals and specialty centers across Turkey, Italy, Spain, Israel, Switzerland, and Germany. The exact process varies by client depending on what's being pursued - but it typically includes reviewing the patient's records, preparing a full clinical summary, and requesting proposals from the hospitals best suited to the case, complete with quotes, availability, and expert calls to review recommendations before the client chooses. 

What a package typically addresses



• Matching the patient to the clinic and specialist suited to their condition - not just the nearest or best-known option
• Reviewing records and history in advance so the receiving clinic isn't starting from zero
• Coordinating appointments, documentation, and logistics so the patient arrives ready for treatment, not waiting on paperwork
• Acting as the bridge between the European specialist and the patient's care team at home, so follow-up care isn't left to chance

For patients weighing whether to pursue care abroad, the honest answer is: it depends entirely on being matched correctly. That's the piece RCM exists to get right.

Curious whether a European specialty clinic package is the right fit for your situation?  Contact RCM Health at:

647-350-5500 | info@rcmhealth.ca



Raymond Rupert | CEO

RCM Health Consultancy Inc.

www.rcmhealth.ca

Sources

1. Fraser Institute. (2025). Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2025. Moir, M. & Barua, B. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-12/waiting-your-turn-2025-17913.pdf
2. Canadian Institute for Health Information. Access and wait times. https://www.cihi.ca/en/topics/access-and-wait-times
3. Global Market Insights. (2026). Medical Tourism Market Size, Trends & Forecast, 2026–2035. https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/medical-tourism-market
4. Balogh, E. et al. (2021). When Should You Trust Your Doctor? Establishing a Theoretical Model to Evaluate the Value of Second Opinion Visits. PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8105538/