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October 30th, 2007
An interesting bit of history of the medical tourism industry by Alfred Anderson
The present phenomenon called “Medical Tourism” was conceptualized more than a thousand years back when the Greek pilgrims traveled to the sanctuary of healing god Asklepios at Epidauria to seek medical treatments. Over a period of time Epidauria became a destination for medical tourism. Through the centuries, healthcare had always been a major concern for the average human being. The quality of treatment, degree of cost involved and the convenience of the system have always been the major determinants of a good healthcare system. Post-Epidauria medical science has come a long way; nevertheless some of the developed nations fail to satisfy the healthcare needs of their people despite having great medical infrastructure.
United states is one such country where the healthcare expenses have gone out of reach of the general public. While those covered under a medical insurance do not feel the financial pinch, but the ones without a cover suffer the most. As of 2005, about 41.2 million people in the United States did not have a medical insurance. The astronomical healthcare expenses had even led to personal bankruptcy in some cases. Confusing/ multiple medical bills, bulk cash payment upfront, aggressive collection procedures often lead to financial instability. Even the ones covered under a health insurance plan along with the low-income individuals face the risk of a medical debt. Though the quality of medical care at the United States is superlative, the prices charged to avail such a treatment pokes a major hole in common man’s pocket. However, it’s not just the cost factor that makes the healthcare system of United States inaccessible. The waiting period for certain procedures are so long that in some cases a patient ends up waiting for a year or more for the treatment to get started.
The rising costs of healthcare and the inconvenience related to its accessibility have made the age-old concept of medical tourism a phenomenon today. Countries like India, Singapore, Thailand and U.A.E have become the most preferred medical tourism destinations for the patients. Not only do they provide world-class medical care at affordable rates but also couples the medical tourism package with a brief sightseeing tour. As a result, people from all over the world are coming to these countries to seek medical treatment. Over 3,74,000 people came to Singapore in the year 2005 to meet their healthcare needs. The medical tourism industry in India is estimated to touch $2 billion by the year 2012.
Having visualized the immense potential of the medical tourism industry, the concerned authorities of these countries are leaving no stones unturned to become the market leader in this industry. While most of the developed nations like that of the United States are still struggling to balance their out of track healthcare system, destinations like India, Singapore and Thailand have surely cashed in this opportunity by attracting a growing number of medical tourists.
Alfred Anderson has rich experience in the field of online brand marketing. His interests includes Internet marketing and research on emerging online business trends. Healthcare Tourism India
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alfred_Anderson
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October 30th, 2007
The InsureBlog has an interesting comment about two factors driving UK residents to flee their National Healthcare System in favor of treatment abroad.
“But for our cousins across The Pond, it’s quite obviously not about price (after all, it’s “free”), but the very real lack of care, both in quantity (waiting lists) and quality (lack of sanitation, for example).”
Interesting. The long wait times in the UK for even critically needed care are well known. But is there also a basic problem with sanitation? Apparently. Cases of Clostridium difficile contracted in hospitals has increased 500 percent in the last 10 years, according to an article in World Net Daily. It would seem sick hospitals are pretty common in the “developed” countries.
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October 29th, 2007
Microsoft announced it will buy Bangkok based Global Care Solutions (GCS), a health care IT solutions company. GCS’s integrated suite of applications for running hospital clinical and administrative operations was developed in collaboration with Bumrungrad International Hospital, a landmark in Asian medical tourism. Bumrungrad has captured quite a bit of attention worldwide for being one of the first hospitals to go to an all digital hospital information, medical record and radiology imaging system. Most hospitals world wide still rely largely on paper records and film for x-rays.
During my last couple of trips to Bumrungrad I personally witnessed the use of the system, called Hospital 2000. The latest was when my wife and I went for our annual health screening. We had all the lab work and chest x-ray completed and then met with the doctor for the consultation. All the results including the x-ray were at her fingertips on her desktop computer. She added a couple of annotations during the discussion (in English). Then she pulled up my wife’s results and discussed her results (in Thai). Following that our final reports were printed and waiting for us at the front desk on our way out. Efficient, impressive.
Site Search Tags:Global Care Solutions, Bumrungrad, Microsoft, IT
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October 24th, 2007
Kasikorn Research Centre regularly publishes studies of different industries within Thailand and makes recommendations for business development in those segments. They recently released a study on private hospitals in Thailand. The numbers are interesting.
Thailand has 344 hospitals with 35,086 beds. There are 102 private hospitals with 15,000 beds in Bangkok. That’s 43% of the entire countries facilities concentrated in Bangkok, mainly because that’s where the highest earners are located, the people who can afford private medical care.
The number of foreign patients has grown at a rate of 12.4% over the past three years and is expected to reach 1.54 million this year. Kasikorn is recommending that private hospitals expand their presence in the regions where there are many foreign tourists and residents, such as Chiang Mai, Phuket, Chonburi and Hua Hin. They are also forecasting increased business from wealthy citizens of neighboring countries and suggest adding facilities to serve Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma.
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September 1st, 2007
Thailand’s National Innovation Agency announced success in treating foot wounds of diabetes patients with their own stem cells. Several diabetes patients, aged from 50 to 72, with chronic wounds on their feet, especially difficult in the case of diabetics, were injected with stem cells extracted from their own blood and the wounds completely healed in a three to four month period.
The reported results are from the previously announced study of teatment of diabetic limb ulcers undertaken by Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital, Chulalongkorn Hospital and Thai StemLife.
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August 23rd, 2007
 Two new studies and an editorial in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine supported gastric-bypass surgery as a way to significantly improve mortality rates in obese people. Such surgery has been performed for quite some time and shown to be effective for weight reduction in morbidly obese patients. But until these studies were completed there was no definitive data on the effects on mortality rate.
The two large and long term studies were performed in Utah and Sweden. The Utah study showed a 40% improvement in mortality rates and the Swedish study 29% compared to overweight patients in the control groups who did not have surgery.
Surgery has proven to be the only substantially effective treatment in this class of patients. Last year, surgeons performed 177,600 gastric-bypass operations in the U.S. But at a cost of $25,000 per operation there will be a lot of debate over whether or not private and government insurance should be expanded to cover more of the procedures. The issue has already been hammered out in the UK where obese teens will receive free stomach surgery.
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August 20th, 2007
 One of the questions a lot of westerners have about receiving medical care overseas is “What happens if the doctor makes a mistake?” The worry is that they return home and have complications that won’t be covered by their domestic insurance or Medicare. Well, starting next year if your American doctor makes a mistake Medicare won’t cover the cost of fixing it. That’s what ABC news is reporting. Medicare states that the new policy is aimed at promoting better hospital care and safety. The logic behind that is more than a little twisted. Patients with potentially severe complications as a result of a doctor’s mistake suddenly have no coverage to have it corrected. So how do they get treated? Demand that the same doctor who goofed work on them again for free? Ask another doctor to fix them up for free? What are the chances of receiving treatment at all when you now have no coverage because your problem is the result of doctor’s mistake?
There are fewer and fewer rationalizations for getting your medical treatment at home in the west. Another one just disappeared.
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August 15th, 2007
A study released by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics shows that life expectancy in the U.S., while increasing, has rapidly fallen behind that of many other countries. People in 41 other countries now have longer life expectancies.
“Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Murray attibutes some of the lack of competiveness to the health insurance system, blaming many early deaths on people who died from treatable illnesses but who cannot get treatment because of lack of insurance. But he does hint at what is probably a more fundamental cause of America’s slip in life expectancy, which is the high rate of obesity. Another researcher puts it this way: “The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy,” said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. “We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times.”
Murray says that the debate about health insurance isn’t going to result in any improvements because there is more to it than that. He says “The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does.”
That last statement is certainly true. But using life expectancy as the measure of a country’s health care quality is incomplete, perhaps even misleading, isn’t it? Consider a country where there is very little health care available to the average person but where the lifestyle is inherently healthy. Life expectancy would be long. There are also numerous countries where the public health care system is available to everyone but at a pretty basic level of quality, while private health care is outstanding but beyond the reach of the average citizen in terms of price. Life expectancy on average will be lower in those countries. But that sort of broad brush assessment isn’t useful to the individual.
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June 22nd, 2007
Bumrungrad International in the news again. They have been steadily expanding throughout Asia and the Middle East. The latest development is the signing of a four year agreement with the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi to operate the Al Mahfraq Hospital in the United Arab Emirates. The hospital has 460 beds and handles over 310,00 patients annually.
Bumrungrad now owns and operates over 70 hospitals and healthcare facilities in seven countries in Asia and the Middle East. It also has the largest chain of renal dialysis centers in Asia. Much of Bumrunrad’s and other medical destinations’ rapid growth in recent years has been driven by the large influx of patients from Arab countries. Travel to Europe and the U.S. for medical treatment has become much more difficult for those patients since 9/11 and as a result the medical tourism industry in Asia has been booming. Burmrungrad has not only been addressing that demographic with staff and facilities tailored to their needs, but has also been steadily expanding its presence in the Middle East.
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June 20th, 2007
The Joint Commission International (JCI) has awarded Bumrungrad International Hospital certification of its stroke and heart attack patient care. These two disease specific accreditations mean that Bumrungrad meets or exceeds international best practices for treatment of patients suffering from stroke and heart attack. Bumrungrad is one of only two hospitals outside the U.S. to receive such disease specific accreditation and the first to be accredited for more than one program.
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