Medical Tourism

The cost of surgery in places like India, Thailand and South Africa can be a 10th as much as in the United States or Western Europe, even with Western-trained surgeons and the most modern of facilities. Tourism-industry experts estimate that several million visitors cross national borders worldwide for health care each year, including tens of thousands of Americans, although no exact numbers are kept. Asia, Latin America and Africa are the real growth area for take-out medical care.

Just in the past year or two, medical-tourism agencies have moved to contract with small, self-insured company benefit plans to offer foreign medical care as a discount option to workers. And there are reports that some larger companies may begin outsourcing employee health care overseas. Yet there are qualms about this sort of travel, even to facilities that have been accredited by international organizations and added to insurance companies' preferred-provider lists.

For the most part, people contemplating going overseas for care don't have nearly the tools open to them in the United States for checking out quality, for instance, state medical and hospital boards, professional societies and registries, as well as rating organizations.

The American Board of Medical Specialists does list surgeons and other medical experts who practice overseas and shows if specialty boards here have certified them. Likewise, the international branch of the American Joint Commission on

Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has certified, including on-site inspection within the past three years, the credentials of 90 hospitals in 20 countries.

Source: Scripps Howard News Service, Lee Bowman, 8/16/06