"WellPoint Jump-Starts Medical Tourism Trend"

September 14, 2009

While browsing for articles today I found a very interesting article entitiled "WellPoint Jump-Starts Medical Tourism Trend" written by Ken Terry (author of the book, RX for Health Care Reform) at bnet.com regarding medical tourism. The medical tourism trend will be huge in the years to come. Here are the first few paragraphs of the article with the link below to view the whole. In my opinion, bnet Healthcare is a great place to keep up with industry trends.

“Healthcare providers and insurance companies have long been at odds over reimbursement, coverage, and pre-authorization issues. Now, it appears, physicians and hospitals may soon have another bone to pick with health plans, over medical tourism.
Wellpoint, the largest U.S. health insurer, is conducting a pilot of medical tourism with Serigraph, a specialty graphics company with operations in Wisconsin, Mexico, and Asia. Serigraph employees have the option to travel to India for non-emergency surgery. Paul McBride, vice president of health care management and services for WellPoint, says that it makes sense to do these procedures in India, where the cost is 80 percent lower and the quality is just as good as in the U.S. WellPoint, which would like to expand its test, is focusing on cardiac and joint-replacement operations that require a two-week hospital stay.
Other health plans are also slowly beginning to cover medical tourism. Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, for instance, has created an international network of doctors and hospitals covering Thailand, Costa Rica, Ireland, Turkey and other countries. A number of self-insured companies are also letting their employees seek care abroad.
The AMA, which last year approved guidelines for U.S. residents who travel abroad for medical care, estimates that about 150,000 people did so in 2006. The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions estimates that this number will increase to 16 million over the next decade. That could cost physicians and hospitals billions of dollars in lost revenues. "
http://bit.ly/za7jW