How Safe is a Surgical Safari?
Now that's what I call recuperation: Many Americans are heading to Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere for medical procedures.
Photo: Charles Briscoe-Knight, Photographer's Choice, Getty Images
Steve Forbes, proponent of the flat income tax, has now suggested a solution to our country's health care crisis: medical tourism. In an editorial in the August 13 issue of Forbes magazine (free registration is required to read the article online), he glowingly reviews the trend among Americans to have costly medical procedures done in third-world hospitals. I beg to disagree.
Don't get me wrong -- two of the finest hospitals I've ever laid eyes on were in places I least expected to find them: Bangkok and Nairobi. A few years ago, I walked into the Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, my stomach in knots thanks to a single glass of questionable water. The place looked fancier than the Oriental hotel down the street, and the doctor's visit and prescription for Ciprofloxacin cost less than $30 combined. Last spring, I accompanied a friend as she was medevac'ed to the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, where a U.S.-board certified physician correctly diagnosed her unexpected and unlikely condition, and a jacketed and gloved waiter served her meals.
Yes, it's possible to get safe medical care abroad, and even to have cosmetic and other non-emergency surgeries performed with good success. But let's not all start booking tickets for our next operation just yet. You can find comments both for and against medical tourism -- many written by doctors and dentists -- at All Blogged Up: A Moof's Tale. A quick web search will also lead you to companies like Cosmetic Vacations in Rio de Janeiro and Surgeon & Safari in South Africa. But here are some rules of thumb to think about before pulling out your passport:
* Don't let price rule your decision. If the deal seems too good to be true, it's probably because the doctors are inexperienced -- or worse.
* Before you go, find a physician close to home who will agree to see you for any follow-up or complications.
* If you're considering a cosmetic procedure, contact the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, which qualifies doctors in 67 different countries. For other procedures, find out if the surgeon is certified, and by which board, and if the hospital is accredited, and by which agency.
* Ask a trusted physician at home if he or she can recommend a colleague abroad.
* If you don't speak the language of the country in which you're planning to go under the knife, make sure your doctor speaks fluent English.
Have any of you traveled abroad for medical care? If so, we'd love to know: How did it turn out?
RSS Feeds
The key driver for most people travelling for treatment is not so much saving money as getting access to treatment not available in their local area.
In USA with the emergence of a medical underclass said to number 45 million people, medical tourism puts first class medical treatment into the economic reach of this group.
At Globe Health Tours we are focused on providing patients with the information they need to make an informed decision. My advice is choose an agency like us and do not try to evaluate foreign hospitals on your own. You are not equipped to do the job.
Posted by: sholto | August 01, 2007 at 05:48 PM
I have filed murder charges against Bumrungrad hospital for the death of my 23 year old son...who died on 23 Feb 2006 at Bumrungrad Hospital.
I invite your readers to look at www.bumrungraddeath.com and see for yourself what Bumrungrad is all about...in their own words...read their correspondence in which they refuse to answer one question concerning my boy's death.
Now hear this: In most of the countries where medical tourism/outsourcing is being actively marketed their are NO medical malpractice laws on the books.
The Joint Commission, the American based accreditation firm endowed by the US Congress in 1965 to accredit hospitals in order that they be eligable to receive Medicare payments have been under investigation by the Senate for the past several years...and a GAO report in 2004 called for their power to be revoked....they sell accreditation without overseeing it.
This same Joint Commission is now selling international accreditation without any enforcement provisions...and they are, essentially stealing the authority given to them to operate ONLY in the US.
If something bad happens....patients and their families have NO recourse. NONE.
Many American hospital corporations own, operate, manage or have partnered with foreign hospitals...where they can operate with impunity...and without liability.
There is no way to assure that physicians are accredited...at Bumrungrad I found 10 who were not even LICENSED!
Sure the place looks like the Taj...these people are master marketers...but underneath the glitz...their lurks real danger...and they will sell you anything and everything possible....
Doctors in Thailand get 20% kick backs on drugs they prescribe....and often over prescribe drugs...and are wined and dined by US and European drug companies who easily convince these masters of medicine to use drugs for indications which have NOT been approved either in the US or Europe!!
Organ trafficing is big business in South East Asia....what Mr. Forbes may not know...is that the art of selling organs in that part of the world...and in the former Eastern bloc....is now being done to order...where patients are killed for their hearts and other organs...this nightmare, I fear, is what happened to my son.
But then again, Mr. Forbes, a billionare, might be exactly the kind of buyer that these offshore medical meccas are seeking to attract....everything has a price....even a life.
The phenomena of medical tourism or outsourcing is big business....Malcolm regards it as fair game....I regard it as a threat and disrespect for life.
www.bumrungraddeath.com
Posted by: jimgoldberg | August 04, 2007 at 04:25 PM
Trackback: http://blog.newmedicalhorizons.com/2007/08/your-application-for-healthcare.html
Posted by: NMHInc | August 20, 2007 at 02:26 AM