Due to his expertise, experience and invaluable insight on medical tourism, Dr. Arlen Meyers, MedVoy’s Co-founder, President, and Chief Medical Officer will be an invited speaker for the upcoming Medical Fusion Conference to be held in Las Vegas, NV, November 5th-8th 2010.
Below are references of two most used resources about Medical Tourism available in MedVoy website presented here for ease of navigation:
Price Comparison: Use this to compare prices for various procedures you are looking for across domestic and international providers.
Medical Tourism Guide: A simple, detailed easy to understand medical tourism guide that elaborates more on what is medical tourism, why medical tourism, medical tourism concerns, accreditation processes that are available in medical tourism, medical tourism savings, quality of care, physician credentials, followup care. Also it includes medical tourism pre-trip / post planning plus things to consider while choosing a medical tourism company to work with.
As anyone following this industry knows, medical tourism is evolving rapidly. Some of the biggest changes are:
1. Movement from an emphasis on “tourism” to “medical”, with some questioning whether the term “medical tourism”should be abandoned in favor of descriptors like “global and domestic healthcare facilitation or aggregation”
2. A shift from international travel to US domestic referral to an ever expanding base of “centers of excellence”
3. Domestic price and quality transparency leading to value comparisons
4. Global competition forcing US providers to lower their charges
5. An emphasis on regional referral networks rather than long distance networks
6. Increasing IT interconnectedness because of HITECH incentives in the US
7. Increasing telehealth and mobile health options
8. Industry consolidation and elimination of marginal players
9. Higher barriers to entry as companies develop difficult to build networks
10. Initial attempts at costing the true benefits of various business models.
BOTTOM LINE: Buckle your seats belts. We’re in for a rough ride.
According to research performed at the Center for Medical Tourism Research in San Antonio, Texas, medical tourism continues its relentless growth. In fact, the triple digit growth rates arguably make medical tourism one of the fastest growing industries in the US.
Now that healthcare reform legislation is passed, the economy is gradually recovering and the unemplyment rate is stabilizing, pundits are polishing their crystals balls and predicting the impact on the future of the industry.
The disparity in the supply and demand for services, the aging population and more costly technological advances will continue. In response, look for the continuing growth of online care/telehealth, global information networks and transportability of personal health records and continued transparency in quality, price and outcomes. These are all positive steps towards making care better, cheaper and more accessable in the US and around the world.
Are you worried that the doctor in another city, state or country is not as qualified as yours? How about bringing your doctor with you?
More and more US doctors are asking about practicing in other countries for one or two weeks. Denver based plastic surgeons practice a few weeks in Dubai. An orthopedist in a Western state is available to operate almost anywhere for a few weeks. A global PPO is recruiting specialists to operate in designated countries where the cost savings can be passed on to the patient and payor.
Whether it’s reimbursement pressure in the US, a desire to see another part of the world, or cold economics of healthcare, surgeons , like patients, are moving around the world.
BOTTOM LINE: Don’t be surprised to see your surgeon in the airplane seat next to you. Global supply and demand is forcing a change in how we deliver care.
MedVoy’s Chief Medical Officer, Cofounder and President, Dr. Arlen Meyers, was recently interviewed by Medical Spa MD.
In this interview, Dr. Meyers defines medical tourism as “leaving home for care. It can be inbound, (someone from Mexico coming to the US), outbound (leaving the home country to go to another country) or domestic. There are local, regional, national and international medical tourism clusters developing throughout the United States and around the world.
It is estimated that global medical tourism is a $100B global industry expected to grow significantly over the next few years. While no one can know for certain the effects of the recent US healthcare reform bill, rising costs, lack of supply of physicians and the demand for technologies and treatments continue to expand and fuel the growth of the industry.
The most common procedures sought by patients considering medical tourism are cosmetic surgery and dentistry, bariatric surgery, IVF and short stay procedures in urology, orthopedics, ENT and ophthalmology. That said, because of the onerous costs of some procedures in the US, patients are seeking life-saving cardiac surgery in India, proton beam irradiation in South Korea and living donor liver transplants in Asia.
The entire interview may be found here.