Apart from the cost one of the major differences between the majority of US healthcare and medical tourism destinations appears to be the personalized service one receives.

For example, the private healthcare offered in places such as New Zealand is the boutique option. You can choose your hospital, doctor and the day of treatment but you have to pay. In contrast, the public healthcare system in New Zealand is government funded and hence there is no charge for its use by individuals. Indeed the same doctors work in both systems. The real difference is in the waiting time, and choice of doctors.

Contrasting this with the US health system where a recent article cites an example of the same medical clinic having two entrances: one for the insured clients and one for the self- pay. The self pay got the boutique service; to see a doctor and the higher charge. The insured patient got the diagnostic test but very little more and their insurance paid (a reduced rate).

It appears more and more Americans are walking away from insurance and wanting to make their own decisions with added benefits that feel to them that they are receiving fair value for their own non-insured, self pay health dollar. In this environment of consumer driven healthcare, medical travel must be an option.

Americans now have a boutique option of medical care in their own country where increasingly the customer not the insurer pays. Since the customer can not negotiate substantial discounts, (like the insurers) they pay … a lot.

Hence to travel overseas for easy access to the same level of service, a single invoice (if not more personalized), for 25% the cost of the boutique service in the US, with no bureaucratic minefield or unexpected bills starts to sound attractive.

Related posts:

1. Defensive Medicine – Why Americans Pay More

Every year, more than 44,000 Americans die simply because they have no health insurance. Congressman Grayson recently launched a website http://www.namesofthedead.com/ to honor but a few of the unfortunate masses.

Reading the stories on the site dispels the common misconception that the uninsured population is largely comprised of illegal immigrants and societies parasites. These people are just “Joe Average Americans” that are victims of the US health care system.

As a New Zealander I find this hard to fathom, as do most other people I discuss this with… a first world country similar to ours, with people dying unnecessarily because they cannot afford healthcare… Surely not! This is a third world problem they say – you must be mistaken.

What ever happened to the American Dream?
Are all men created equal except for those who cannot access medical insurance??

Where does Medical Travel fit into this?
It is not and will not ever be a panacea for the US Health system, but it can certainly help.
Medical Travel is not for everyone. There are some people that travelling for treatment is simply unsuitable for and some procedures which do not fit the criteria, for example, treatment that requires multiple visits over a long period of time.

However there are people living with pain and illness that may benefit from affordable treatment offshore. As I read the names of the dead, I tick off many that we could have helped, particularly in the early stages. The big question is, how do we get the message through?

Related posts:

1. The Wider World of Global Healthcare

The Towers Perrin’s latests survey that US employers who insure their employees will shortly face an average annual per employee cost for healthcare coverage of US$10,000 must come at a time when companies must wish they had only to focus on increasing profits not reigning in healthcare costs.

One is somewhat surprised therefore in the slowness of the uptake of a product that if chosen and implemented correctly, will not only be desirable for employees, maintain high standards of healthcare but deliver significant cost savings, namely medical travel.

Nothing in the healthcare reforms to date has talked about addressing cost; its all about coverage. The question will therefore be will reigning in the costs of healthcare be left in the hands of the hospitals and insurers with the self -insured companies left to either pay higher costs or lay off staff? Spending time considering medical travel looks like a viable and progressive third option

Related posts:

1. How Companies are Changing Healthcare Costs

As medical tourism grows in the US it is interesting which groups benefit the most and which groups are the most unsettled as a result. As the Harvard Business Review points medical tourism is a disruptive technology and will end up influencing elective healthcare in the USA. Whether the impact of this disruptive force is large or small will depend on the degree of adoption of medical tourism or medical travel by US consumers and businesses.

Consumers have now a choice about affordable elective surgery that insurance companies currently have little influence over. Any new system that gives customers an additional choice will be by its nature disruptive. Medical tourism is no different. The degree of adoption will however largely be dependent on how closely health consumers ‘buying decisions’ and medical tourism destinations ‘selling processes” align. Coupled with this is how closely the medical and cultural environment of health customer’s home country is mirrored in the destination to where the medical tourist is heading. American medical travelers who speak only English will be far more comfortable in a country whose environment is English speaking not just its doctors.

This notion of upsetting the current system is probably the reason health insurers in the USA have been slow to adopt medical tourism programs. To adopt them is unsettling for insurers. The cost savings seem very attractive but how does one actually implement and integrate such an option into a plan? This is even more difficult if the insurers themselves are not prepared to travel to the medical tourist destination and see for themselves how much of a foreign experience the trip would be for one of their customers.

However the insurers are somewhat missing the point by not at least considering medical tourism as an option: the early adopters will have an advantage over the late comers as first mover advantage in this market confers significant benefits into terms of capacity, cost realization, learnings and subsequent innovation gleaned from being involved in other medical systems that may be able to teach the US about healthcare provision.