For the 47 million Americans who are under insured or have no health insurance at all, combining elective or needed surgery with travel to a foreign country is a tempting alternative. In response, many countries have now become hubs for medical tourism.
Medical Tourism Past and Present
Patients have been crisscrossing the globe in search of better, cheaper and more expedient health care for centuries. It is said the ancient Greeks traveled to the coastal city of Epidaurus looking for cures. In the past, medical tourism evoked images of bargain basement boob jobs, not state-of-the-art heart surgery. Today, with more countries building modern hospitals catering for First-World patients and accreditation organizations vetting them for quality, the industry is developing standards and protocols that will allow medical tourism to go mainstream. (SFGate, 01/04/2009)
Foreign Countries Offering Lower Cost Surgery
Surgery in some foreign countries can cost less than half charged in the United States (U.S.) even taking into account the cost of airfare, hotel room and meals. Many of the physicians practicing at the hospitals in these countries have been trained in the U.S. and use the latest techniques. (AP 9/10/20008). Among the countries becoming destinations for medical tourists are:
- Brazil
- Mexico
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Thailand
Now a number of U.S. major medical centers, including Duke Medical Center, John Hopkins Medical Center and Columbia University Medical Center have partnered with international hospitals.
Medical Tourism Arrangements
The Medical Tourism Association (MTA) recommends that medical tourists work with specialized brokers who arrange surgery, travel, and hotel contracts that also provide for a doctor or hospital back home for follow-up care. Liability should be spelled out if a lawsuit follows. According to MTA problems are more apt to come up when patients make arrangements themselves.
MTA is an international non-profit association made up of what they consider the top international hospitals, health care providers, medical travel facilitators, insurance companies and other members with the common goal of promoting a high level of quality of health care to patients in a global environment. Among its aims are:
- Transparency to insure patient safety about the quality of health care that can be found in individual countries.
- Communication between members to deal with problems arising from the globalization of health care including situations such as legal, economic, and patient financing.
- Education of patients that need to understand what should be looked for in seeking a provider overseas. This includes providing an unbiased source of information about top hospitals, their quality of care and outcomes.
Boarding a plane to see a doctor, receive health care treatments or have surgery is enticing an increasing number of U.S. and First-World patients, already numbering 1.5 million, to travel the world and save money at the same time.
Sources:
Deloitte Center for Health Solutions
