Medical tourism in Panama: the numbers and the regenerative push

How many travel for health: no official figure

Medical tourism in Panama is presented as a growing industry, but almost everything published is an estimate. In January 2025, La Estrella de Panamá noted that there is no official figure for people who come to the country specifically for a treatment, and that regulating medical tourism was still pending in the National Assembly; the Panamanian Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (Apavit) had followed the issue since 2010¹. The same report cites Tocumen airport data (17,573,435 passengers through November 2024, up 8 percent), which measure travelers in general, not patients¹.

The most repeated number dates to February 2020: the then Minister of Commerce and Industries, Ramón Martínez, said medical tourism generates 400 million dollars, and the report added that patients and companions had grown 25 to 30 percent a year, without stating a source². In October 2019, when sector operators spoke to the EFE agency, they said economic figures and statistics were not disclosed because they were considered confidential³.

The supply side: international accreditation and Ciudad de la Salud

Sector voices stress location, the dollar and Tocumen's connectivity, and, according to the then head of the Social Security Fund (CSS), Enrique Lau Cortés, prices of “about 30 to 40 percent of what it costs elsewhere”¹⁴. The most requested specialties, per one sector source in 2019, were orthopedics and neurosurgery; patients came mostly from the Caribbean, the United States and Canada³. On accreditation, Hospital Punta Pacífica, which signed a management agreement with Johns Hopkins Medicine International in 2008, received Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation in 2011⁶, and a 2023 column says it has been re-accredited several times⁷. I did not consult the JCI directory, so each hospital's current status should be confirmed there.

On the public side, the CSS Ciudad de la Salud, opened in January 2024, has 1,368 beds, 51 operating rooms and an investment above 1 billion dollars, and its director said in 2024 that Panama aims to become a regional medical tourism hub⁴. In May 2025, President José Raúl Mulino announced that the Panama Tourism Authority (ATP) was tendering the return of tourist medical insurance, with a reference price of 3 million dollars⁵.

From health tourism to "regenerative"

The loudest offer is not hospital care but regenerative medicine. Listing the services Panama competes with, La Estrella includes plastic and aesthetic surgery, dental, orthopedics, fertility, bariatric, oncology, ophthalmology and stem cell therapy¹. I found no state program promoting regenerative medicine as a tourism product; what is documented is the private market. In 2026, researchers from the Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies and the National Research Bioethics Committee described at least six companies selling stem cell therapies for 5,000 to 50,000 dollars, and warned that the lack of enforcement likely facilitated the growth of that industry⁸¹⁰.

The legal framework is strict on paper: Executive Decree 179 of 2018 limits approved clinical use to hematopoietic transplant, and everything else is experimental and must go through approved research protocols⁸. In late August 2026, the Ministry of Health (MINSA) inspected two establishments and opened two files, with possibly unregistered products among the violations⁹. We summarized the market in Stem cells in Panama: medical tourism without evidence, the physician's framework in Prescribe, import, administer: the physician's legal map in Panama, and the comparison with aesthetics in the sanitary registration double standard.

What the evidence says about traveling for treatment

A 2019 systematic review of 43 articles described complication rates as high as 56 percent after medical tourism and noted that inconsistent definitions and regulation make the problem hard to measure¹³. In cosmetic surgery, a 2023 review of 44 studies identified 589 patients with complications after surgery abroad: infection was most common, 98 percent of organisms were bacterial and 81 percent were Mycobacterium¹¹. Another, with 36 articles and 370 patients, found that infections mostly followed abdominoplasties done in Latin America or Asia, that most needed surgical management, and that the most severe cases were gluteal augmentations¹². We covered mycobacteria in aesthetic procedures in Law 491 and mycobacteria.

With stem cells the picture is less well documented but no less serious. One patient developed a glioproliferative lesion of the spinal cord after receiving cells abroad, described as a complication of "stem-cell tourism"¹⁴; three patients with macular degeneration lost vision severely after intraocular injections of adipose-derived cells¹⁵; and a 2018 review compiled published adverse events after unproven interventions¹⁶. In the United States, direct-to-consumer promotion of these interventions is also widespread¹⁷, and the FDA states that the only approved stem cell products are blood-forming cells derived from umbilical cord blood and that no exosome products are approved¹⁸.

What a physician can verify

• Whether the facility holds an operating permit and whether the products it uses are registered with the National Directorate of Pharmacy and Drugs (DNFD)⁹.
• Whether an advertised accreditation appears in the accrediting body's own directory (not consulted here)⁶⁷.
• Who follows up on a complication once the patient is back home: the 2019 review flags informed consent and continuity of care as concerns¹³.
• Whether a "regenerative" treatment sits inside an approved research protocol or is only a tourism package⁸.