If we build it, they will come. Kevin Costner, in the Hollywood movie, had his baseball field of dreams; hospital management teams have - or had - their medical tourism field of dreams.
While Costner's dream came true, it seems the dreams of the hospitals have yet to come true. Those who in recent years built their dreams of prosperity and success on creating piles of profit from medical tourist dollars may today be wondering if their visions of high patient numbers and easy profits will ever materialize. Or whether the dreams were nothing but hallucinations born of false numbers and overvalued promises made by medical tourism industry spokespeople.
Does it matter? If we look beyond the immediate short term goals, is there a longer term goal that is being reached? Are we actually moving towards globalization of healthcare?
Today the global economic recession is forcing us to take a very hard look at our embryonic industry, and to remind ourselves of our original premise - that delivering quality healthcare for all, whether local resident or international traveling patient, is at the heart of all our efforts.
Did these hospitals try to do too much too quickly? Many hospitals, in pursuit of the riches that were to come from medical tourists, shifted focus from increasing the quality of healthcare for all who came through their doors to pursuing what they believed would be quick and easy profits from foreign nationals searching for alternative sources of treatment abroad.
The first step for most was to acquire international, usually American JCI accreditation. Many if not most hospital CFOs justified the expense of acquiring international accreditation as a condition of readiness to meet the onslaught of international traveling patients. Others justified the expense, heard in greater numbers as the quantity of JCI-accredited hospitals grew, by claiming it was necessary in order to compete with other hospitals, local or not, who had JCI accreditation.
That medical tourism numbers have not been growing shouldn't really matter right now to the hospitals. What was meant to be a benefit to medical tourists will arguably become an even greater benefit to local residents. The newly accredited hospitals have, after all, raised the standard of healthcare for all their patients and "customers."
The higher standard now forces upon them a long term commitment to quality care, since the initial investment, often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, is large enough that it won't be brushed aside. It won't be allowed to dissipate despite the low numbers of medical tourists.
Global healthcare, or globally integrated healthcare as some prefer, has taken a huge step forward.
Julie Munro is CEO of InterMed Global, a medical travel facilitator providing international patient services and management since 2003.