Istanbul Medeniyet University Faculty of Law organized the “Health Tourism with its Legal Aspects Symposium” to discuss health tourism, which is one of the leading sustainable tourism types in Turkey and the world, from the implementation of patient rights and ethical principles to the legal dimensions of the problems encountered in practice. Held on Saturday, October 21, 2023 at Aşık Paşa Conference Hall in Göztepe South Campus, the event was open to the participation of all our students, academic and administrative staff and the public.
In the opening speech of the symposium, where academicians and professionals took part as speakers to discuss the legal dimension of health tourism, Prof. Dr. Nur Zeliha KAMAN, Dean of the Faculty of Law, emphasized the necessity of discussing legally important issues and the role of the symposium in meeting this need as Turkey, which has become very popular in the field of medical and health tourism, continues to progress in this field.
Prof. Dr. Ayfer UYANIK, in her speech titled “Legal Problems Faced by Health Tourism Companies and Solution Suggestions”, conveyed the results of the research she conducted on the status of legal consultancy of the organizations that mediate between patients and health institutions for health tourism. Mr. UYANIK stated that he determined that the companies have a tendency not to receive legal consultancy services and discussed the legal problems that may arise in the future due to this situation. He stated that sustainable tourism policies should be developed in a way to take the necessary measures to ensure that institutions providing tourism services can both carry out their service processes as responsible institutions and become transparent institutions.
Prof. Dr. Fulya İLÇİN GÖNENÇ, in her speech titled “Patient Rights and Protection of Personal Health Data in Health Tourism”, drew attention to the need to protect patient privacy while sharing the medical history of patients who will come to our country for treatment within the scope of health tourism with health institutions. In this context, İLÇİN GÖNENÇ stated that the government should meticulously implement the Law on the Protection of Personal Data and emphasized the importance of protecting this information against cybercrimes.
The last speaker of the first session, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sevtap METİN, in her speech titled “Major Ethical Issues in Health Tourism”, drew attention to the excessive growth caused by the tax reduction for companies and the danger of organ trafficking and money laundering that may arise after the expansion of the sector. He emphasized the importance of fair pricing in creating an accessible health system and equal access to health services.
In the second session, Prof. Dr. Özlem YENERER ÇAKMUT, in her speech titled “An Overview of Artificial Insemination Intervention as a Type of Health Tourism from the Perspective of Turkey and the Turkish Criminal Code”, stated that although criminal proceedings are initiated against parents who want to return to the country with the child born after applying heterologous insemination (surrogate motherhood), which is directly related to reproductive rights and illegal in our country, there is no crime type in our criminal code. On the other hand, she drew attention to the legal problems that may arise in the context of paternity and stated that the Constitutional Court’s annulment of the legal provision that resulted in the mother not being able to file a lawsuit for denial of paternity is an important development in the context of gender equality.
Prof. Dr. Hayrunnisa ÖZDEMİR, in her speech titled “Physician’s Responsibility in Health Tourism”, explained the legal structure of the contract between the patient and the intermediary organization. She pointed out that these contracts are mixed-combined consumer contracts and that the Turkish Code of Obligations is applicable.
The third speaker of the session, Prof. Dr. Tekin MEMİŞ, in his speech titled “Liability and Insurance in Health Tourism”, drew attention to the insufficiency of the maximum amount of coverage in insurance policies and stated that while there are insurance policies for physicians, the lack of sufficient policies for agencies or facilities constitutes a problem.
The last speaker of the session, Prof. Dr. Nur Zeliha KAMAN, Dean of the Faculty of Law, in her speech titled “Responsibility of the Administration in Health Tourism”, stated that today there is an intense tendency to outsource public services to private law persons and that administrative law contracts are becoming rarer. KAMAN stated that the existing criteria for obtaining the authorization certificate, which is one of the rare areas where the administration plays a role, is insufficient, and concluded her speech by stating that government supervision should be increased and that the inaction of the administration will lead to a responsibility.
In this symposium, which is quite comprehensive on what intermediary institutions, physicians and facilities should pay attention to legally in terms of what intermediary institutions, physicians and facilities should pay attention to when they prefer our country in terms of improving the health and welfare of people in terms of health tourism, which makes a great economic contribution to our country and provides foreigners with access to quality and affordable health services, the ways of being effective institutions for both agencies and administration were drawn; what needs to be done in the health system for more efficient and responsible service delivery were underlined.
The symposium ended after the question and answer session, which attracted great interest from physicians and agencies as well as lawyers.