THOUGH MOST PATIENTS would rather stay at their local hospital for any procedure, sizable increases in healthcare costs, co-payments and transparency efforts – coupled with high numbers of uninsured and underinsured – are driving consumers to foreign soil for affordable care.
“Medical tourism is a symptom of a crying need of how care is delivered in the U.S.,” said Rick Wade, senior vice president for the American Hospital Association.
In 2007, an estimated 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for medical care; that number is anticipated to increase to 6 million by 2010, according to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
“Medical travel has the potential to increase the competitiveness in American hospitals,” said Cathy Clark, senior principal at the Noblis Center for Health Innovation. “Given that most of our hospitals are not for profit, they don’t need to make extra, but they need to (be able to operate).”
It is becoming more difficult for providers to maintain the volume level to be successful, she said.
Hospitals are getting involved with overseas joint program development and management agreements in order to provide some healthcare options for less money.
“If you think about health systems in this country – there’s never enough capital to do everything they want to do,” said Clark. “Very few hospitals can say they have more capital than they can use.”
Experts are doubtful that individual hospitals will lose a large numbers of patients, but there is no way to measure what the local systems are losing.
Hospitals can’t reduce costs, and what you see for charges isn’t always what insurance companies pay out, said Wade. “The insurance company is in control here.”
Clark says U.S. providers have to continue to demonstrate superior quality of care. This includes more than just accommodations.
“The challenge screams out of the need for local providers to establish relationships with consumers and employers,” she said.
Nearly 40 percent of consumers surveyed for Medical Tourism: 2008 Survey of Health Care Consumers, conducted by Deloitte, said they would travel outside the country for medical treatment if the quality was comparable and the cost was cut in half.
The survey also found that just over 40 percent of those with commercial insurance, 29.9 percent of those with Medicaid and 28 percent of those with Medicare said they would be willing to travel abroad for healthcare. Those who do travel, do so more often for elective and cosmetic surgeries.
New York’s Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield experimented with medical travel about 10 years ago, according to Wade. More recently, WellPoint announced that it would launch a pilot program in 2009 to include coverage for select procedures at a limited list of overseas hospitals.
“It was inevitable that somebody would try to make an industry of it,” Wade said. “There’s less (medical tourism) than the promoters are saying there is, but there might be more in the future.”
Clark doesn’t think that the WellPoint pilot will have a huge impact, but it will be valuable in identifying lessons learned for any others who wish to follow suit.
The American healthcare system “should be fixed so that nobody is ever faced with this kind of decision,” said Wade “It should be a personal decision.”