The Bridge is in good company this week, in bouncing off Robin Cook’s medical thriller “Foreign Body.” The Economist led off its own lengthy feature about medical tourism with a reference to the novel, also.

… Central to the plot is the story of Maria Hernandez, a working-class American woman who travels to Delhi to get a hip replacement she could not afford back home. Alas, she and other medical tourists die in mysterious circumstances. Contrast Ms Hernandez’s fate with that of another American health tourist, Robin Steele. Mr Steele, a real patient, recently went to India’s Wockhardt hospital chain for a heart operation. Not only is he in fine shape, but he also enjoyed a holiday afterwards and saved several thousand dollars to boot.

Mrs. Hernandez’s tragedy may sell books, but Mr Steele’s good health is more typical. The future of health care, long one of the most local of all businesses, promises to be increasingly global.

Boldface is added for emphasis. The Economist claims “… to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” Apparently, for the 164-year-old journal, medical tourism is, well, just plain smart.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Andrew Weil, MD, is a prolific author, perhaps best known for establishing and popularizing the field of integrative medicine, which combines conventional medical treatments and alternative treatments for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of their safety and effectiveness. His web site, DrWeil.com, is among the most visited medical sites on the Internet. The “Ask Dr. Weil” column, from the site, is a cottage industry unto itself; “Dr. Weil has raised dispensing health advice to an art form,” says reviewer Erica Jorgensen at Amazon of his bestseller Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being.

But I didn’t know until yesterday that Dr. Weil had ever had anything to say about medical tourism. I really should have known better. In an “Ask Dr. Weil” column from last fall, he confronts the issues involved in medical travel head-on, concluding:

Keep an eye on the growing trend of medical tourism. I predict it will become more prominent in coming years.

This, in response to a writer who said he was “appalled” that a friend was going to India for heart surgery.

Read the rest of this entry »

The National Center for Policy Analysis, in an article released today, concludes that “as more insured patients begin to travel abroad for low-cost medical procedures, medical tourism will result in sorely needed competition in the American health care industry.”

The NCPA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization with a goal of developing and promoting private alternatives to government regulation and control. The latest analysis was prepared by Devon Herrick, who also authored a lengthier study of medical tourism and travel in Nov. 2007 titled Medical Tourism: Global Competition in Health Care.

The latest analysis recommends direct public policy changes at the state and federal level:

Read the rest of this entry »

Relaaaaaaax. It’s not a true story. It’s not based on a true story. It’s a work of complete fiction by the master — perhaps the inventor — of the medical thriller genre, Robin Cook. “Foreign Body,” published Aug. 5, is bound to find an audience; Cook, 68, has written a string of bestsellers dating back to the 1970s. “Coma,” the original medical thriller, came out in 1977. It was the “gripping story of patients who check into a hospital for “minor” surgery-and never wake up again.” We’ve had variations on the theme ever since from Cook, a medical doctor. Books. Movies. TV Miniseries. Robin Cook is an industry.

That his latest book comes wrapped with a medical travel and tourism theme shouldn’t be surprising. Cook has always mined the latest headlines for his stories: Organ donation, genetic engineering, fertility treatment, in vitro fertilization and managed care have been a few of the topics that have previously provoked his flights of fancy. His last book, “Critical,” was a tale woven from some of America’s worst fears, and facts, about its own medical system — one in which business issues take precedence over quality of healthcare.

Medical tourism is a natural for Cook. That it has become big enough to attract his attention is testimony more to its popularity, success and safety than it is to its drawbacks and dangers, however. Medical tourism generally, and Indian medical tourism specifically, will continue to thrive, though I wouldn’t choose to read “Foreign Body” to pass the time while on a plane to Delhi for hip surgery any more than, once upon a time, I would have read “Jaws” while relaxing on a small sailing vessel off the shore of Cape Cod.

Read the rest of this entry »