Bon voyage, and get well!
More and more Americans are traveling to foreign countries for surgeries, drawn by lower prices, and side trips to tourist sights. Experts advise patients to do their homework before they go.
By Judy Foreman | 02 October 2006
Eileen Clemenzi , a 56-year-old hairdresser from Vero Beach, Fla., had a great time in Malaysia this summer. She loved the malls, the beaches, and the attentive service she got from hotel staff, including one sweet bellboy who sent her a jade Buddha after she got back home.
But the best part of her overseas adventure was getting a new hip at Gleneagles Medical Centre in Penang -- a surgical procedure that, with no health insurance and an annual income of $30,000 a year, Clemenzi could never have afforded at home.
"It was a great experience. Oh, my God, the care was great. I could never have gotten a hip any other way," said Clemenzi, who had been in severe pain for two years.
Like Clemenzi, more and more Americans are embracing medical tourism: flying to India, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, Brazil, Singapore, Latvia and other places for treatment in attractive, sometimes world-class foreign hospitals, often with a resort vacation afterward.
No one knows how many Americans are outsourcing their medical care. And no one, apparently, has kept good data on how well those patients have fared.
The trend began among Americans who are native to those countries, and for people wanting procedures not covered by insurance, such as a facelift. Now, people with inadequate or no insurance are going for more complicated procedures. And insurance companies and employers are beginning to consider the practice as a way to save money.
"The big news," said Robert K. Crone, president of Harvard Medical International, is the fact that Americans are now confident enough in the quality of care to get hip and knee replacements and cardiac surgery thousands of miles from home.
"And the motivation there is clearly financial." In Clemenzi's case, the whole shebang -- airfare, two weeks in a hotel, plus an $8,000 bill at Gleneagles -- cost about $14,000. Hip replacement surgery in the United States would have run more than $35,000, largely because of higher labor costs.
Source :
www.boston.com 
