Medical Tourism Has Come to the U.S.A.

Posted on 3 May 2012 in Uncategorized by admin

The bed linens were by Frette, Italian purveyors of high-thread-count sheets to popes and princes. The bathroom gleamed with polished marble.

Huge windows displayed panoramic East River views. And in the hush of her $2,400 suite, a man in a black vest and tie proffered an elaborate menu and told her, “I’ll be your butler.”

It was Greenberg 14 South, the elite wing on the new penthouse floor of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. Pampering and décor to rival a grand hotel, if not a Downton Abbey, have long been the hallmark of such “amenities units,” often hidden behind closed doors at New York’s premier hospitals.

But the phenomenon is escalating here and around the country, health care design specialists say, part of an international competition for wealthy patients willing to pay extra, even as the federal government cuts back…

It’s more common than you think:

Many American hospitals offer a V.I.P. amenities floor with a dedicated chef and lavish services, from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, which promises “the ultimate in pampering” in its $3,784 maternity suites.

The rise of medical tourism to glittering hospitals in places like Singapore and Thailand has turned coddling and elegance into marketing necessities, designers say…

But it’s all hush-hush:

NewYork-Presbyterian, which once opposed amenities units, would not answer questions about its shift, and declined a reporter’s request for a tour…

And definitely not for the masses:

In space-starved New York, many regular hospital rooms are still double-occupancy, though singles are now the national standard for infection control and quicker recovery…

The customer (oops) patient is always right:

“We pride ourselves on getting anything the patient wants. If they have a craving for lobster tails and we don’t have them on the menu, we’ll go out and get them,” [said] William Duffy, Mount Sinai Medical Center’s director of hospitality…

Avoiding the interns:

“I’m perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” [Nancy Hemenway, a senior financial services executive] added. “I have a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for all my other doctors. And I see no people in training — only the best of the best.” …

Serving the merely well-off:

Beth Israel Medical Center’s…green-carpeted lobby may be more Radisson than Ritz, but its 12 single rooms starting at $450 feature Bose stereos and flat-screen TVs, and chef-prepared kosher food is served on china…

And hospital administrators are apologetic:

Wayne Keathley, Mount Sinai’s president, minimized the unit’s role… “It is not nearly as large or elaborate as some others,” Mr. Keathley said. He called the money it brought in “a rounding error in my budget,” and said that patients came for the clinical care, not the amenities…

Gail Donovan, the chief operating officer of Continuum Partners, which includes Beth Israel and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital [said] “Our mission is really to be the safety net hospitals of our communities.” …

http://healthblog.ncpa.org/medical-tourism-has-come-to-the-u-s-a/

Medical Tourism Resource Online

Border crossing for surgery: More than just boob jobs

Posted on 12 May 2010 in Uncategorized by admin

With President Obama’s crusade for lower health costs in full swing, many Americans are left wondering where they’ll find quality treatment.

The answer is likely south – as in, yes, Mexico – but trends indicate the border-crossing phenomenon may also be growing at home.

There was a time when traveling across the border for prescription drugs or dental treatment – much less a surgical procedure – meant returning with a botched boob job or worse, but many U.S. tourism companies are taking the plunge, sending their clients to Mexico, Costa Rica and beyond for medical treatments that rival those at American hospitals at half or even one-third of the cost.

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American Health Care : American Hospitals – Expensive But the Gold Standard

Posted on 18 June 2009 in Uncategorized by admin

It is more than amazing.  On top of that medical tourism medtravel may well see more than its projected increases in use and implementation over the next several years.

While it is true that many in the US choose or almost forced by economics to seek health care outside the US it was their choice.  Medical tourists who had cash and wealth – King of Jordan , foreign politicians , oil sheiks did not choose anywhere else generally but the US – be it the Mayo Clinic , John Hopkins or other such respected venues. US health care may of been expensive to many – yet it was available and set the standards of excellence , as opposed to British health care or E.U.  Even though most of the health care institutions overseas are touted as “high quality”  or “as good as “  no one sets these as the highest standard to compare to.

Note the following article of the health care cuts – to the most needy of top of that – by the bureaucrats of the upcoming US socialized non-socialized medical system.

If you have any sense that you may be getting sick in the years ahead, I suggest you get sick immediately. If you will be in need of surgery or any other medical procedure, do it now! If not immediately, be certain that you hand yourself over to the health care professionals before Oct. 15 of this year. That is the date on which President Barack Obama hopes to sign his health care bill once it has gone through the congressional baloney grinder.


At the heart of President Obama’s plan is his stated goal to cut medical costs. That might sound good to you, but it means cutting services, nurses, technicians, medical tests and, most prominently, the use of expensive technology. The president’s top medical advisers are quite frank about this. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel and a health policy adviser in the Office of Management and Budget, has chided Americans for the expense of their being “enamored with technology.” Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, charges medical innovations as being responsible for fully two-thirds of the annual increase in health care spending. Their solution is to limit expensive innovations. A 2008 Congressional Budget Office report agrees with their cost analysis but concludes happily that such innovations “permit the treatment of previously untreatable conditions.” As I shall show, there are more humane ways to cut health care costs.


Also at the heart of President Obama’s plan is the restriction of services for people 65 and older, who by virtue of modern medicine may actually be 10 to 15 years younger in terms of good health than they would have been a generation ago. Alas, they still have higher health risks and costs than younger people. Thus, they are going to bear the brunt of the Obama administration’s cost cuts, for 27 to 30 percent of Medicaid spending is spent for caring for people at the ends of their lives. With the government taking over more of the nation’s health care costs under the Obama regime, it already has been decided that government monies are spent more economically on younger people than on older people. If a 65-year-old needs the cost of a hip replacement covered, the government will say it would better spend that money on a younger person, whose hip will last longer. Or perhaps the government will decide the money is better spent on preventive medicine for younger people.


In the federal stimulus legislation that the president signed Feb. 17, we find funding for a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. “Comparative effectiveness research” is a term used by economists in health care for making health comparisons based often on age, which leads to limiting care based on a patient’s age. In Great Britain, comparative effectiveness research is actually used to deny patients treatment for age-related diseases, such as heart disease and macular degeneration. When the federal stimulus bill was going through Congress, there were warnings regarding the consequences of comparative effectiveness research. Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., a heart surgeon, warned that it would lead to “denying seniors and the disabled lifesaving care.”


Yet the policy remained in the bill, along with requirements for doctors’ offices and hospitals to maintain databanks on patients while creating a national network to monitor patients’ care. The good side of that is that a central database can send out the latest information on treatments, though doctors who keep up with their medical journals already know about these treatments. The dark side is that it will allow the federal government to control how our doctors treat us. The bill speaks of “appropriate” and “cost-effective” care and provides penalties against doctors, beginning in 2014. Now there is an Orwellian twist to the Obama promise of “hope” and “change.”


As Betsy McCaughey has written in a groundbreaking analysis of the Obama health care proposals, Draconian cost-control measures are not the answer to health care reform, and they are based on erroneous data. Health care’s spending increases over the past five years have been about half what they were in the recent period before that. Average family spending on food, energy and health care has remained the same for decades. Moreover, contrary to myth, there are not 47 million uninsured Americans, but actually about 22 million. Rather than pass a health care reform that mercilessly would limit health care to older citizens (and to chronically ill citizens) while still increasing federal expenditures by at least a trillion dollars, she suggests a modest reform, to wit, debit cards for the uninsured and the needy.


Appearing in a recent installment of Spectator.org, McCaughey wrote, “Providing sliding scale assistance, based on household income, to families to purchase . coverage would cost $20 to $25 billion a year.” That is one reform that would deal with our present problems. There are others, which I shall take up in later columns. What we do not need is Orwell’s Big Brother overseeing the rationing of health care to senior citizens, particularly senior citizens with years of life ahead of them.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/tyrrell061809.php3

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Is Medical Tourism Only Overseas Travel ?

Posted on 27 February 2009 in Uncategorized by admin

It is an interesting point or points of view or what might call perspectives.

Medical tourism or “medtravel”  or  “medical tourism / medtravel”  often is not most times refers to people , patients or their families traveling to far off , what were once backward third world places , to get medical treatment or medical treatments which they either cannot afford to get “back home”  or are too far down the list or que.

Medical tourism can now refer to medical treatment in the good old USA.

It is now accident that often the most wealthy and powerful come to the US for treatment.

The choice of oil rich sheiks , with no shortage of cash and money to burn , – ever,  used to be “private British ” health care clinic or private British hospitals.  It was closer and more familiar to the colonial past .  However , or in spite of this many of the wealthiest people in the world now routinely , as a matter of course , to American hospitals for their medical care – be it John Hopkins , the Mayo Clinic , Sloane-Kettering or a myriad of others.

In addition to that many who holiday in the US – say for warmer Florida in the winter are already there , so to speak.  Travel costs are already covered , as well as a stay away from home in nice surroundings.  Even friends or family can visit for a stay – and have minimal costs .  Hence these areas , Florida included , have incurred a resulting boom in medical care to those who are not their direct population and citizenry.

These too can be termed “medical tourism”  or medical tourism medtravel even home in the USA.

Medical Tourism: World-class Medical Care at Affordable Rates … – Well-trained and experienced doctors, state of art medical facilities and personalized care have helped India to register the fastest growth rate in this Industry. The number of patients seeking treatment in India has gone up from 10000 …

Florida’s Tourism Addiction | Newgeography.com – Growth in medical research is already happening with the arrival of the Nemours Center for Pediatric Research. Both of these are happening because of internal decisions, windows of opportunity, and with mostly private, …

Kerala Medical Tourism – The government’s initiative to combine tourism along with medical practices at a cost which is comparatively very low as compared to U.S. or U. K , has contributed to the rapid growth of medical tourism in the state. …

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