Andres Oppenheimer, a popular and sometimes controversial columnist for the Miami Herald, has generated a buzz on the newspaper’s website with his personal account of the healthcare he received in Mexico, where he was hospitalized for three weeks after a potentially life-threatening emergency. Oppenheimer was stricken during dinner and damaged his esophagus when he became ill. He had a rare medical condition called Boerhaave Syndrome, which, left unattended, can be fatal. He writes:

By the time the ambulance arrived at the nearest hospital — the Angeles Mocel hospital — they had convened a first-class team of physicians who were awaiting me. It didn’t take long for Dr. Jorge Salas, the lung doctor who presided over the team, to rule out a heart attack and enlist thoracic surgeon Dr. Patricio Santillan for an operation to remove the more than four pints of gastric fluid in my chest. After a six-hour operation, I spent two weeks in intensive care and another week in a single-bed room until I was released — with all tests showing excellent results — on June 28. Doctors tell me that I should be back to normal in a matter of weeks.

The full article is here:

To your health: You can care for it abroad

Oppenheimer is quick to point out that he is something of a VIP, and perhaps got better care than would the average tourist. “Medical tourism experts warn that there are both good hospitals and lousy hospitals in Mexico,” he adds. “You can land in a bad one, and you are history (plus you can forget about suing anybody for malpractice).”

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Sometimes, you can’t go it alone and get satisfaction. Individual consumers with complaints, however valid, are rarely a match for the sort of colossal indifference that a big corporation or government entity can routinely bring to bear on a problem.

And most medical tourists and travelers go it alone. I know I did, in 2004. I did my research. I talked to other people who had been overseas for healthcare. I vetted my doctor. And I went, and I had a great experience.

But what if something had gone wrong — if I had been unhappy with my treatment or had complications? I like and trust my doctors; I know they would have done everything they could to “make it right.” But I have no way of knowing what would have happened, really.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran a story about a patient, Betty Meisel of Portland, Oregon, who went to Thailand in 2005 for plastic surgery and had things go wrong. The hospital, perhaps the best-known destination for international patients, claimed three years later to have not received the email she says she sent back then regarding her terrible surgical outcomes. When contacted by a reporter in April, the hospital did write to Meisel and issued a refund.

Which didn’t make everything OK, of course, though it was something.

Years ago, stories like Betty’s were more the rule than the exception, when reporters wrote about medical tourism. This was not because the medical facilities and doctors overseas were bad, but because reporters didn’t know enough to place a single bad outcome in context. The “news value” would be the oddness of someone going overseas for surgery, and the media treated bad surgical outcomes almost with a “what else would you expect?” kind of demeanor. The media learned, over time, and stopped reporting the small percentage of bad results as the norm. Bumrungrad International, in fact, has a reported complication rate that any U.S. hospital would be proud to match.

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It took me a full day to decide whether or not the above headline worked for me at all. Undeniably, the European Commission, which has broad power over economic policy for most of Europe, is supporting transnational regulation for healthcare in the 27-member European Union (EU). (News link)

Almost immediately upon the announcement of the proposal, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) was freaking out.

“Millions of patients will be able to travel abroad for free medical treatment within three years under European plans,” was the breathless lead in The Telegraph, which went on to say:

The new rules will allow patients to buy hospital, outpatient or dental treatment in any EU country and send the bill to the National Health Service.

Experts predicted that the rules could spark an exodus of patients from the NHS due to concerns about long waiting times and hospital superbugs.

Once adopted the new laws will give patients the right to claim back the cost of any medical procedure up to the amount it would have cost in their home country.

Further down in the article, the NHS had its say:

“… Health Secretary Alan Johnson is fighting for the right to make patients obtain NHS permission in advance for major operations.

The health department said: ‘We are absolutely committed to ensuring that the NHS retains the ability to decide what care it will fund.’

The proposal represents a potential boon to medical travel and tourism businesses and facilities in Eastern Europe especially, along with perhaps Portugal, Spain and those Western European countries that have lower costs than Great Britain — along with no waiting lists, for which the NHS is notorious. The reaction from India was also immediate — the EU proposal was called a “major setback” to Indian medical tourism, which has been courting NHS outsourcing for years now.

Can the NHS and Britain buck the Commission? Perhaps. The proposal isn’t set in stone. But there is a certain aura of inevitability about medical tourism in Europe …

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The Northern Colorado Business Report last week did a story about medical travel and tourism that featured Jennifer Blankenship, a sufferer of multiple sclerosis who needs stem cell therapy. The cost in the United States: $100,000.

The cost in Costa Rica for the equivalent treatment: $7,000.

The article link:

Medical Tourism Could Cure High Costs

Blankenship is heading to Costa Rica next month. The article, by health issues reporter Steve Porter, also spends some time talking about U.S. insurance companies and medical tourism: When will they start bringing it under their umbrella, as a care option? Perhaps soon, according to Daryl Richard, vice president of communications for UnitedHealth International.

“UnitedHealth International is currently researching the many issues and challenges related to medical travel and hopes to decide within a few months whether it will design a formal medical travel product for its customers,” Richard is quoted as saying.