Bloomberg has a good article about how many southern Californians covered by Health Net are being encouraged to have medical procedures at some of the big hospitals just across the border in Mexico. Many patients are being offered the option of no out of pocket expense if they get their surgeries done at one of the Tijuana hospitals now on Health Net’s approved list. That can mean several hundred to several thousand dollars saved.

And while Health Net is focused mostly on southern California Hispanic patients, Aetna has come forward with options for coverage of hip and knee replacement surgery at Singapore General Hospital. Again, there are substantial savings to patients who elect that option. And Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina has signed up Bumrungrad for coverage of out-of-network surgeries.

Insurers seem to be rapidly adapting to the medical tourism phenomenon.

Site Search Tags:Health Net, Aetna, Blue Cross, Bumrungrad

Another survey has been released, this one by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, a Wisconsin based research group. Their results show that 11 percent of employers now cover medical tourism involving medical treatment outside the U.S. The survey group was 400 U.S. corporate benefit managers.

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A story that has inflamed a lot of people tells of a new credit scoring system under development specifically to rate patients’ ability to pay their hospital bills. The name of the company developing the system is Healthcare Analytics, a Massachusetts start-up that refers to the system as a hospital risk assessment tool. Investors in the company include Fair Issac Corp., developer of that well known credit scoring system called FICO.

Some people are referring to this new system as MedFICO and are sounding the alarm that it will be used to deny medical treatment to people whom the system indicates might be unlikely to pay their medical bills. There are many issues being discussed, including the possibility of being denied treatment due to an error in the MedFICO record - errors in traditional credit reports are fairly common and they are troublesome and time consuming to have expunged. Read the full story here.

How is this related to medical tourism? Indirectly, in that it is yet another assault on U.S. patients, driving them harder to find medical care they can afford offshore.

Site Search Tags:FICO, credit rating

In recent years Thailand has expanded dramatically as a medical tourism destination for patients from the middle east. Over 60,000 patients a year come to Thailand from the United Arab Emirates alone. The outgrowth has been an increasing demand in the UAE as visitors return home with a new found interest in Thai food, hospitality and medical care. The UAE is already a major destination for Thai workers, with more than 12,000 Thai workers supporting the building boom in that country.

Now Thailand and the UAE have signed an agreement to facilitate more trade between the two countries, giving Thais working in the UAE more benefits. This will accelerate the expansion of Thai medical centers into the UAE - Bumrungrad already has a branch center in Dubai and is in talks to take over management of another facility in Abu Dhabi. Bangkok General Hospital is looking to setting up operations in 2008.

Thai medical care is famous in the region and the new trade agreement between the two countries promises to further enhance its presence.

Site Search Tags:UAE, Bumrungrad, Bangkok General Hospital, Dubai, Abu Dhabi

The China Post reports that hotel occupancy rates in Thailand are approaching 99% leading up to Christmas peak season. 450,000 tourist from Taiwan head to Thailand each year. And some of that is for the purpose of medical tourism. Taiwan’s Thai travel authority, TATTPE, strictly controls tour operators and has authorized only 23 to sell tour packages to Thailand. And among the package now available are medical tour packages.

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New York based Commonwealth Fund, an organization that studies health care issues, surveyed patients in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain, Australia and the U.S. regarding their experiences and perceptions of health care in their countries. From the perspective of patients in those seven countries the U.S. ranked last. The areas in which U.S. patients stood out as having big problems was in struggling to pay bills, difficulty getting an appointment to see a doctor, and skipping doctor visits or medication due to cost.

At the same time this is going on we have Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani going on radio and proclaiming that “We have the best health care system in the world” in a recent radio ad. Is it political rhetoric, or does he really have no clue? He and other leaders should take a little medical tourism field trip to some of the truly world class health care centers outside the U.S. to see how it’s really done.

Another item in the survey that really sticks out is that once in the system 32% of patients reported suffering a medical mistake. That’s a huge percentage and it may happen because the U.S. ranked last when it came to doctors having access to patients’ medical records at the time of the visit. Now that’s something that’s been beautifully accomplished by Bangkok-based Bumrungrad International Hospital using Bangkok-based Global Care System’s hospital IT solution, which was recently purchased by Microsoft. Thailand leads the world in this area.

Site Search Tags:Commonwealth Fund, healthcare survey

This new book titled “Patients Beyond Borders: Everybody’s Guide to Affordable, World-class Medical Tourism” is yet another sign of medical tourism becoming mainstream. The publisher describes it this way:

Patients Beyond Borders is the first comprehensive, easy-to-understand guide to medical tourism, aimed at the 84 million uninsured and under-insured Americans seeking treatment options abroad for increasingly expensive procedures in the US. From Thailand’s American-accredited Bumrungrad hospital to Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Clinic to Johns Hopkins International hospitals, health travelers now have a full array of the world’s safest, best choices in treatment centers and physicians. Whether patients are seeking dental work, heart surgery, orthopedics, cosmetic surgery, neurosurgery, or LASIK eye repair, Patients Beyond Borders is the best way to become an informed health traveler and get patients started on their health travel journey. Part One: “How to Become a Savvy, Informed Medical Traveler” provides all the information and tools patients need to make safe, intelligent and cost-effective decisions about healthcare abroad: how to plan and budget a health journey, finding the highest-quality hospitals and treatment centers, finding the best physicians and surgeons, working with health travel planners, and more. Part Two: “The Most-Traveled Health Destinations” provides never-before-published information on treatment options in 14 countries, including fully-accredited hospitals and clinics, health travel agents, treatment specialties and super-specialties, recovery retreats, accommodations and more. Includes Patients Beyond Borders Treatment and Country Finder and Medical Travel Budget Planner. Patients Beyond Borders is the medical traveler’s first complete guide to a world of new healthcare options. About the Author Author Josef Woodman has spent more than three years researching contemporary medical tourism, interviewing patients, practitioners, administrators, government officials and specialists in the field, while conducting an extensive analysis of safety records, accreditations, success rates and consumer trends. With significant resources and contacts from his pioneering background in health technology on the Web, Woodman has compiled a wealth of information for the American public about important healthcare choices.

It is a fairly inexpensive paperback and sounds like it is packed with information on the top medical tourism destinations worldwide. Check out Patients Beyond Borders for yourself.

Want to stay informed about advances in IT in the healthcare field? Then the Healthcare IT blog is a good place to do that. I stumbled upon it when I was researching additional background information on the Microsoft purchase of Global Care Solutions. There is a good analysis of what the impact of the purchase will be on competing hospital management software systems. There are a lot of other good articles there as well. I’ve added them to my blog roll for future reading.

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The medical community in the Philippines has its eye on making the country another Asian medical tourism destination. There are plenty of good doctors and a plethora of trained nurses in the country. But they are continually leaving for greener pastures in the west. If successful in developing the Philippines as a destination for foreigners to seek medical care they could stem the tide of health care workers leaving the country as well as grow revenues for the nation.

The problem they are struggling with is the lack of a well thought out and implemented system of medical liability rules. In an effort to get something in place it appears that regulators have gone overboard, at least that’s how the medical professionals feel. Currently proposed legislation would punish a doctor for a mistake by imposing a jail term of six months to 12 years, permanent loss of medical license, and up to 1 million peso fine. Spokespersons for the medical profession say that is over the top and would make doctors so fearful of the punishment for making an honest mistake that they would be even more motivated to leave the country.

Others are advocating putting in place a system of medical malpractice insurance and scrapping the proposed legislation that would jail doctors if they make a mistake. It will be interesting to see how this develops. If they go the route of malpractice insurance then the follow-on issue is how large will insurance settlements be, and will the courts be invoked to award enormous windfalls to injured parties, ala the U.S. system, with the resulting sky rocketing cost of medical care.

Site Search Tags:Philippines, malpractice, liability

Perhaps you recall an earlier post about robotic surgery taking off in which the company named Intuitive Surgical (stock symbol ISRG) was mentioned. Did you buy the stock? Take a look at their chart.

Their stock price has tripled in the last year, most of that coming in the last six months. I wish I had bought them when I first noticed them.

Site Search Tags:ISRG, robotic surgery