Medical Tourism Can Improve Global Quality, Transparency - www.healthleadersmedia.com: "Industry insiders say the medical travel industry's growth can ultimately improve healthcare quality for Americans by encouraging U.S. providers to be more transparent with their outcomes.
'Along with driving down costs, I think the other thing it will do is force that transparency of quality data from U.S. providers, and that to me is a huge benefit,' says Wouter Hoeberechts, CEO of California-based WorldMed Assist, which works with employers to coordinate medical travel options for employees.
Before traveling for medical reasons, Americans will likely research and compare costs, outcomes, and quality-related statistics to determine whether the trip is worth it. If more Americans see that the quality of cardiovascular care is just as good as, say India, and they can get the same procedure at a significant cost saving, they will be more likely to go.
If medical tourism grows in popularity, the increased competition could encourage U.S. providers to improve their services and reevaluate costs, as well as make this information readily available to consumers.
There are no easy solutions for fixing US Healthcare and most likely any changes will take time to enforce. Meanwhile, medical tourism offers a good alternative for affordable quality procedures abroad. With reputable medical tourism company such as WorldMed Assist helping patients with the logistics, it makes medical travel to other countries that much less stressful. Another motivator for medical travel is to have procedures done that either aren't approved in the U.S. like two-level cervical disk replacement (whereas only single-level is approved in the US) or procedures that were just recently approved (like Hip Resurfacing - approved in the US only in 2006) where US surgeons don't have anywhere near the experience of their counterparts in certain countries.
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