Malaysia has selected nine health care facilities under its so-called medical tourism hospital program, in a bid to draw more foreigners to the country’s highly profitable health care services.

The Malaysian government will be offering assistance in facilitating and enabling these hospitals to grow beyond borders.

With the rise of medical tourism, private hospital operators are progressively ramping up their efforts to be able to accommodate the millions of tourists travelling there for procedures. The main reason, of course, is the lower cost medical treatments.

In 2018, Malaysia raked in about $350 million from more than a million foreign patients. Treatments ranged from heart bypass surgeries to hip replacements, at a fraction of cost of such services in the US.