How much can you say about medical tourism in less than three minutes? I found out Thursday that the answer is “more than I thought,” when the PBS Nightly Business Report managed to summarize recent events in the industry in … uh … two minutes and 48 seconds, by my clock.

An edited transcript of the segment is here:

“Bill of Health”-Medical Tourism

What did PBS think was important? Aetna’s deal with Hannaford Brothers to offer surgery in Singapore; Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina setting up a subsidiary for medical travel; the American Medical Association announcing medical tourism guidelines; Intercontinental Hotel Group embracing medical travel in Latin America; etc.

Vic Lazzaro, CEO of BridgeHealth International, was among those PBS turned to for comment. The report didn’t break new ground, but it’s interesting that medical tourism has turned into the kind of story that large business news outlets — PBS, the cable news networks, major business magazines — feel they have to keep up with.

The story of modern medical tourism in the United States, as told by the media, has changed over time and now comes in a package of inevitability. It hit home for me last week, when the American Medical Association acknowledged medical travel and tourism and set some broad guidelines (reported here) and, again today, with a significant story by MSNBC Health Writer JoNel Aleccia that advances the storyline for consumers very nearly to a frontier that, until recently, was the province of industry insiders.

Hip surgery in India? Insurance may pay:
Burgeoning benefits could send hordes of U.S. patients abroad for care

The paragraph that jumped off the screen at me was this:

Once the province of the poor and uninsured, medical tourism is gaining attention of industry giants such as CIGNA, Aetna and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who say they either have begun or are considering pilot programs that provide limited coverage for foreign care. One Montana firm, Employee Benefit Management Services Inc., recently began offering medial tourism plans to its 120 self-insured clients in the Northwest.

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If anyone still doubts that medical travel and tourism are having a serious impact on discussions about the future of healthcare delivery in the United States, perhaps they should click on over to this “Let’s Talk Health Care” blog post by Charlie Baker, president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc., one of New England’s leading non-profit health plans. I know the discussion about medical travel has been going on within Harvard Pilgrim for some time, having discussed it last year with Jim Sabin, chairman of the company’s Ethics Advisory Group, who has also blogged about the subject.

Baker notes that — according to a study by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions — the number of people leaving the U.S. to access care in other countries is now growing at a faster rate than the number of people coming from other countries to the US to seek care. “A lot faster,” he says, and he goes on to discuss the profound implications this may have for healthcare in America. The Deloitte study suggests that U.S. healthcare providers will lose almost $16 billion in revenue in 2007 to outbound medical tourism.

“If Deloitte’s trends are correct, the size of that loss will grow to almost $70 billion by 2010 — as much as 10% of total revenues by 2010,” Baker says.

Vic Lazzaro, CEO of BridgeHealth International, thinks that the Deloitte conclusions are perhaps alarmist

“That under this scenario there will be a loss of revenue to hospitals and facilities in the U.S., over time, cannot be denied,” Lazarro commented. “We also would be surprised, though, if that impact was significant for any one hospital or physician.

“We would hope those factors in the U.S. would result in increasing focus on quality, outcomes reporting, service and cost reduction, as this is now what is being delivered at the international hospital destinations.”

The Deloitte study found that nearly 40 percent of American healthcare consumers would be willing to travel outside the country for care if the quality was comparable and the cost was cut in half or more. Highlights of the study include:

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