Middlemen take uncertainty out of medical tourism

While medical travel is thousands of years old, contemporary American medical tourism is in its infancy. The rise of the "health travel planner," or "medical travel concierge," will indeed help ease the decision-making pain of prospective health travelers, connect them with the best hospitals and physicians, and assist with all-important aftercare. Our forthcoming consumer guidebook, "Patients Beyond Borders: Everybody's Guide to Affordable, World-Class Medical Tourism," informs patients how to screen for the best planners, and establish successful working relationships with these newcomers to the health service sector. As the medical travel industry matures, accreditation and licensing of health travel planners will follow. Meanwhile, patients considering medical travel should do due diligence, and check references (former patients, healthcare providers, et al).

Thank you for intelligently including "this is one time when patients would be wise to consult with an outside expert rather than trying to go it alone" in your article.

Health risks take on a new meaning when one travels outside the US for healthcare. For one thing foreign healthcare systems haven’t had the “benefits” of medical malpractice. In US hospitals, medical and dental practices, we have thousands of policies, procedures and standards of care to reduce the risk of medical errors. Many of these medical errors were discovered and hence corrected – because someone sued. While the design and application of these policies, procedures and standards of care are applied by any medical professional with integrity their application and then measuring their effectiveness has added greatly to our healthcare costs here.

Yet, we now have an opportunity to make further use of these very same policies, procedures and standards of care by requiring that foreign hospitals who solicit US healthcare consumers use what we have learned. Additionally we need to require that the middlemen of “medical tourism” who say they are the experts, be measured in terms of their competency to recognize a truly safe foreign healthcare practice based on a working knowledge of the wealth of information we have here in the US.

Not doing this poises foreign hospitals and the traveling patients who are going there at risk of repeating the past.

Stephanie Sulger RN, MS
Health and Safety Specialist
Medical Tours International

Forty years ago, thousands of women throughout the United States, from all economic backgrounds, benefited from a similar, international system of medical care, developed by the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion before the United States changed its abortion laws. By carefully monitoring clinical outcomes, patient experience and negotiating discounts or no charge professional fees, the CCS pioneered a system that can and should be informative to a new generation of Americans who seek to change the system of care that we have here. We have:
* the world's highest costs,
* infant and maternal mortality rates in some parts of this country below those of 'third world' nations,
* 47 million Americans without health insurance and
* objectively documented by our own government, preventable, medical errors that kill nearly 100,000 American patients annually--equal to the cost in lives of a jumbo jet crashing every day of the year and killing all aboard.

To those international providers of quality medical care-- and to those who are beginning to exit this country for affordable, quality care, we should send our applause and encouragement, while taking a hard look at ourselves before criticizing the efforts of others to provide affordable, quality care.

Certainly Medical Tourism or more serious approach with very careful and diligent systems, can reduce the high costs, create more healthy competition and improve the flogging systems in USA.
Just imagine, if waiting times alone are reduced by getting waiting patients for hip replacement and knee replacement by flying them to an excellent destination like Malaysia.
Medical Tourism Malaysia through www.wellnessvisit.com can provide best solutions in all major areas of healthcare and medical procedures.