More than doctors' visits

His company only works with Japan's public hospitals, which receive about five Chinese patients a day.

Many Chinese hire travel agencies to arrange medical visas, appointments, flights and hotels.

While specialized companies, such as Beijing Saint Lucia Hospital and L'avion, have traditionally specialized in China's outbound medical tourism market, more conventional travel companies are expanding their presence, especially in the past two years.

Caissa and China CYTS Tours offer medical-tourism packages to countries like Switzerland and South Korea.

Beijing Utour International Travel Service in 2014 launched Magic Travel, which offers superrich health-conscious Chinese high-end medical services.

Several customers last year booked its 588,000 yuan stem-cell-injection treatment package, replete with five-star hotels and a helicopter sightseeing experience.

Magic Travel's six-day US tour for checkups at the University Medical Center of Princeton costs up to 200,000 yuan and includes Statue of Liberty and Wall Street visits.

"Most of our customers are senior management," the company's product manager, Wang Mingying, says.

Medical tourism was highlighted in a June report on luxury travel by China's Hurun Research Institute, which tracks trends among China's extremely wealthy.

Roughly 60 percent of survey's respondents have taken medical tours and prefer overseas hospitals.

More middle-class customers are also getting interested, which experts predict will soon make medical tours under 100,000 yuan very popular.

Medical tourism around the globe is projected to account for 16 percent of tourism revenue at $678.5 billion by 2017, an SRI International report predicts.

A healthy chunk of whatever the future figures are will likely come from China.