Until now, medical tourism has been a curiosity, iconic gWow, Look How Flat
the World Is Becoming,h fodder for stories on 60 Minutes. But as health insurers and
employers get into the act, get ready for some Battles Royale.
Of course, it was only a matter of time. With surgeries costing tens of
thousands of dollars less in India and Thailand than in Indiana and Tucson, and
with companies ranging from GM to Citigroup desperately trying to shave health
care costs to fend off bankruptcy, you knew it wouldnft be long before insurers
or employers began offering incentives – or forcing – patients to have their
surgery overseas.
Starting this month, some employers working with WellPoint, the nation's
largest health insurer, will begin offering their employees substantial discounts if they
choose to have their surgery in India. The Indian hospitals are accredited by Joint
Commission International (JCI), the arm of the Joint Commission that's in
the business of blessing foreign hospitals. If they are like most of the foreign
hospitals catering to international tourists, chances are that the quality of
care is more-than-acceptable and the quality of service would make the concierge
at the Ritz jealous.
The
press release trumpeting WellPointfs arrangement oozes with PC
spin:
Members will now have more choices regarding where to receive care and
a greater involvement in the care they receive.
Well, what could possibly be controversial about that?!
Ifve
written two articles for the New England Journal of Medicine about
international teleradiology and other digitally-facilitated outsourcing (here and here), another burgeoning piece of our newly flattened world.
That phenomenon is far from fantasy: thousands of patients in American ERs will
have their x-rays read tonight by physicians sitting in India, Zurich, Tel Aviv,
and Sydney. But because this happens behind our professional curtain, the debate
over tele-whatever has largely been Inside Baseball (Is the quality adequate? Do the non-U.S. docs need American malpractice coverage? Can the foreign docs
bill Medicare? [Answers to date: 1) Seems reasonable, a few anecdotal glitches,
but no good studies; 2) At this point, yes; 3) Presently, no – the local docs
bill Medicare for their gfinal readh in the morning and they or their hospitals
compensate the foreign docs]). It's all been back office and arcane enough that
it hasn't been terribly controversial.
While medical tourism seems poised to be more controversial, its limited
niche thus far has attenuated the arguments. To date, most participants have been un- or under-insured people trying
to control their out-of-pocket costs for elective surgeries that require large
cash payments, such as plastic surgeries and elective hip replacements. So most
surgeries have involved private arrangements between patients and international
providers, sometimes facilitated by intermediaries that have sprouted up like
weeds. (Since nobody needs a travel agent anymore to book a vacation to Paris,
up pops a new tourism niche. Capitalism's resiliency never ceases to amaze.)
As I said, as long as these were private choices, the potential reach of
medical tourism was muted, as was the controversy. But every healthcare insurer
and large employer is now actively scrutinizing the concept, and many find it quite appealing. Of course, sensitive to the politics, it is
unlikely that any of them will flat-out force their customers/employees to
travel to Thailand or Singapore. The pressure will be more subtle: with savings
of tens-of-thousands of dollars per case at stake, there is enough money around
to waive patient co-pays, give insurance discounts to employers, and cover
travel expenses – including in-flight drinks and headphones – and still come out
way ahead. As Brian Lindsay wrote in a terrific piece in Fast Company last March,
"They [patients] don't – and we don't – want to be in a situation where
an insurer says, 'You have to go,' " says Victor Lazzaro, CEO of the [medical
tourism] packager BridgeHealth International and a former executive at
Prudentialc One solution is to be up front with patients about the true cost
of their treatment and offer to share the savings with them. In light of what
it costs for a fresh set of knees in the States – $45,000 and up for the
uninsured – and the huge discounts overseas, it's conceivable that patients
might come out ahead if they let a Thai doctor install them. Of course, just
because insurers won't use a stick doesn't necessarily mean the dangling
carrot couldn't be considered coercion in its own
right.
The wars will be fascinating and the battles lines will be fluid and a bit
unpredictable. Consider unions, for example. On the one hand, the cost savings
for companies that insure their workers may help preserve union jobs or allow
for cost savings to be passed on in the form of higher salaries or richer
benefits. On the other hand, as local hospitals are hurt, unionized service and
nursing jobs may take a hit. So should unions be for medical tourism or against
it? Who knows?
But one set of losers seems clearer: domestic providers, particularly
cardiac, plastic, and orthopedic surgeons. Again, from the Fast Company
article,
In one fell swoop, [the surgeons] devolve from the rock stars of the OR
to glorified mechanics, and they'd really only have themselves to blame.
Overseas patients routinely return home raving about the personal attention
shown by their Thai or Indian surgeons. Even before arriving, patients can
trade phone calls and emails with doctors. (Nothing punctures the myth of
American medical invincibility quite like the experience of having a doctor
who actually speaks to you.)
I participated in a panel on medical tourism at last Octoberfs American
College of Surgeons meeting, and many of the docs in the audience were pissed.
Using those computerized audience response gizmos, the surgeons in attendance
were asked: If a patient returned from surgery abroad with a complication and
came to see you, would you agree to care for the patient? A clear majority
answered gNo.h (Had there been a choice called gHell, No!h Ifd
wager that it would have been the winner). Surely Hippocrates would be turning
over in his grave, but Ifm guessing that Hippocrates didnft have to pay
$100K/year in malpractice premiums or watch his 8 years of residency training
become devalued by foreign competition.
How will all of this play out? It seems likely that medical tourism will
continue to grow, as will the number of concerned responses from domestic
providers (mostly guild behavior and protectionism clothed in the garb of
patient safety and quality). Ifm sympathetic to my colleaguesf reactions, but
look, the status quo isnft acceptable: Wefre spending $2 trillion dollars per
year on healthcare and still have nearly 50 million uninsured people, 100,000
yearly deaths from medical mistakes, huge and clinically indefensible variations
in care, and outcome and performance measures that are as likely to be sources
of shame as pride. If flattening our world improves value (quality divided by
cost), either through the new internationalized care or by goosing our own
system into action (the now-familiar disruptive innovation), thatfs got to be a good
thing.
But for domestic providers, it might not feel so good. Yes, foreign
competition led the Big Three automakers to build better and more efficient cars
– but they answered their wake-up call too late to save their hides. The risks
to domestic healthcare are not as monumental as those playing out in Detroit (it
is one heck of a lot easier to buy a Camry at San Francisco Toyota than to get a
CABG in Bangkok, and every now and then a Bangkok airport shutdown or a Mumbai
terrorist attack will make some Americans hesitate before getting on that
plane). And there are hundreds of issues still to be worked out: can patients
sue for medical malpractice, how do you ensure continuity of care for patients
receiving care both domestically and internationally, will medical tourism compromise local care for Thais and Indians, will middlemen
start siphoning off too much of the savings or acting unethically, and much
more.
But in the end, the Flattening of Healthcare is inevitable. And, while it
will be controversial, it may also represent the kind of shakeup our system
requires if it is ever to deliver the value Americans need and deserve.
So hold on tight. Wefre in for a wild ride.