A Canadian man suffering from degenerative disc disease has found some pain relief after seeking care in India after finding little assistance from doctors in his own country. This is an increasingly popular move, as research shows that more and more Canadians are reporting finding such quality healthcare overseas at more affordable costs.
A Louisiana teen plans to travel abroad this year for a second time in hopes that stem cell surgery will ultimately reverse paralysis resulting from a 2006 car accident. Kayla Spano, 18, last year traveled to China for the surgery—while it didn't help her walk again, it did help her to regain some feeling and control in her lower abdomen. Remaining hopeful, she is now planning a trip to Costa Rica, where she will undergo a series of stem cell implants.
"You can't stop this; it is as fundamental as life," says Vishal Bali, CEO of Wockhardt Hospitals Group, one of India's fastest growing private hospital chains.
You might have guessed that Bali was talking about the globalization of healthcare, but more specifically he was commenting on worldwide consumer demand for high quality and affordable healthcare.
In an effort to serve India's surging middle class, Wockhardt hospitals have cropped up across the nation over the past decade and a half. Its size, technology adoption, medical staff reputation, and affiliation with Harvard Medical International have made Wockhardt one of the strong healthcare brands in the country's rapidly growing private healthcare system.
A relatively young company, Wockhardt Hospitals Group wields significant influence in the region. "The agenda of healthcare in India is in the hands of private healthcare," Bali told me in a phone conversation last week. With little government investment or oversight of healthcare, private companies spar for business and the best physicians.
Given the size of India's self-pay population and emerging economy, Wockhardt's primary business opportunity doesn't come from the patients it gets from the West. At the same time, Bali sees an enormous opportunity for his hospitals to continue on as a destination for Americans and Europeans, mostly baby boomers who are looking for quick and inexpensive access to elective procedures like joint replacement, hip resurfacing, and spine and heart surgeries.
"[Boomers] can't wait for U.S. healthcare to fix the system and bring down the cost of care," says Bali. "We don't do soft medicine or cosmetic surgery at all. We are basically focused on areas I call serious medicine … these are truly the life saving and life enhancing surgeries."
Wockhardt serves uninsured and underinsured Americans, who pay for care out of their own pockets, but like many destination hospitals, the system has also begun negotiating deals done with American insurance companies. In fact, Bali says Wockhardt has recently performed surgeries on five Americans, but under terms of the agreement he cannot disclose any specifics.
"We've already done that," he says. "We are already treating employees from a particular corporation in the U.S." Even though U.S. employers and insurers are keeping the details of these deals quiet for now, Bali says that economic pressures will cause a significant and swift increase in the number of employer-sponsored insurers that add global hospitals to their networks.
To Bali, everything old is new again. He sees a parallel between the ways medical travelers sought care some 20 years ago and the so-called new wave of medical travelers. While the first group consisted of people with means from all over the world who were spurred by the lack of access to quality healthcare and traveled to U.S. academic medical centers, Bali says today's medical travelers have means but are motivated by the overall perceived value of select healthcare services.
"It is no longer about lower cost care," he says, "but about high-quality care at a lower cost."
Part of an agreement between Mubadala Development Company and Siemens Healthcare developed last year, construction of a new medical molecular imaging center at the Tawam Hospital in Al Ain is now underway. The Tawam Molecular Imaging Centre, scheduled to be completed in 2009, is expected to improve diagnostic imaging in the region and contribute to more efficient treatment for patients with cancer as well as cardiovascular and neurological diseases.
The Collaborative Communications Summit has announced an exclusive summit on deal-making for investors focused on healthcare technology. The Health Technology Investment Forum will be held on September 30, 2008, in New York City. The Health Technology Investment Forum President Waco Hoover said in a statement: "the Forum will present a series of high growth potential investment opportunities and address key drivers in the health technology sector affecting M&A growth. We're very pleased to be working with major industry players, providing a unique and valuable platform that fosters deal-making and M&A activity."
Misuse of hospital technology leads to increased medication errors, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The study revealed that both the technology design and its implementation—often relied upon as a “cure-all” for medication administration errors—is flawed and can increase the likelihood of some errors. In addition, researchers found that “the urgencies of care” and creative attempts to cope with the problems have caused other medication errors.