Medical tourism keeps adding more innovations as the concept moves along. Now through this company in California you can have your surgery done outside the US by a US doctor. Not too long ago I posted about surgeons who travel from facility to facility and it appears if signed up here they can travel from country to country now. About 25% of general surgeons don’t maintain offices and travel between facilities.
Surgeon Shortage Pushes Hospitals to Hire Temps – Scalpel Services
The press release below indicates GME is in the process of signing up doctors and surgeons; “have scalpel will travel”?
Medical migrants - “locum tenens” Healthcare on Temporary Assignment
Not too long ago someone did a spoof about a cruise ship for surgical procedures and I do start to wonder if this is next? Will we start seeing a fleet of “floating hospitals in the LA harbor one day with people waiting to get in, while the hospitals on dry land sit at less than capacity? Doctors are normally pretty busy folks these days too so for those who may not be able to take the time to travel very far is this next?
“What’s wrong with those people there, why do they have this need to have their surgery performed on a boat”, words that could be echoed from someone perhaps not familiar with the US healthcare system (grin). Here’s the video with the “spoof”, or at least I think it is still a spoof.
There’s even an app for Medical Tourism, yikes!
Medical Tourism Will Have An Application Soon – HealthTraveler for Medical Resources
Back to earth here, I attended the World Conference on Medical Tourism last year and at the link below you can read up on what I learned and what other countries are doing to attract patients, they are building big hospitals in anticipation. If the boats win out though that could throw a monkey wrench in the entire plan.
World Medical Tourism Conference 2009 – A Learning Awareness
As always I am posting this information as an awareness to hopefully share some of the knowledge I have gained by being curious and hopefully it will be of use along the way here to see what is in the works for medical tourism. We want no surprises here when it comes to our healthcare as some of this may be living beneath the surface without enough visibility. We all know everyone is cutting costs every which way and today nothing surprises me with new business ventures and ideas that once we may not have winked an eye at, but they are in fact being built and/or entertained.
Mexico’s President is motivated to capture some revenue.
Mexico President is Motivated With US Healthcare Reform to Attract Residents and Medical Tourism With Joint Commission Accredited Hospitals
Canada is trying to figure out how to squeeze all their own citizens in for care and yet make room for some tourists to gain some revenue.
Former President of the Canadian Medical Association Thinks British Columbia Should Start Thinking About Medical Tourism
One more thing to keep in mind is that tourism is also trying to lure the health insurance industry into the loop as well and with a few employers this is an option with surgical procedures. BD
California based Global Medical Excellence (GME) sets a new benchmark. Innovative arrangement with U.S. doctors to treat U.S. patients in International Hospitals of U.S. quality standards. GME's patients to pay less than 25% of the U.S. cost of surgery.
LOS ANGELES, April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- In what can potentially be a ground-breaking development, the California based medical tourism company Global Medical Excellence LLC has developed an innovative arrangement to tackle the increasing cost of healthcare in the U.S. GME has entered into contracts with U.S. Board Certified surgeons who agree to travel to India or Lebanon (and soon other countries) to perform surgeries on GME's patients. Contrary to the existing phenomenon wherein U.S. patients traveling abroad are operated upon by foreign doctors, patients can now visit GME's website and choose to have either a U.S. doctor or a foreign doctor for various elective surgeries such as Joint Replacement, Spinal Disc Fusion, Lap Band, Plastic Surgery, etc. Moreover, GME will be providing a comprehensive insurance coverage to the patients to mitigate all risks.
According to Dr. Khoury, an expert in International Finance, this is a sensible option for the safety-conscious medical tourism patient, especially those with limited insurance coverage or high co-payments. The patients will be typically saving about 70-75% of the U.S. cost by choosing this option. This new arrangement will surely ease the concerns that patients may have about surgeries in a foreign location. GME is in various stages of negotiation with doctors and will have around 400 doctors in 7 major specialties by June-end.
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