| CU Tiger |
08-14-2019 08:18 AM |
Jumping back in the thread a bit to the conversation on healthcare costs..
Just read this this morning and it was topical and kind of mind blowing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/b...=pocket-newtab
Getting some pop up so i will cut/paste below.
Quote:
A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check)
A novel twist on medical tourism to avoid the high cost of U.S. health care saves an employer money and even earns the patient a bonus.
ImageDonna Ferguson, of Ecru, Miss., traveled to a private hospital in Cancún, Mexico, to have her knee replacement in July.
Donna Ferguson, of Ecru, Miss., traveled to a private hospital in Cancún, Mexico, to have her knee replacement in July.CreditCreditRocco Saint-Mleux for Kaiser Health News
By Phil Galewitz
Aug. 9, 2019
Leer en espańol
CANCÚN, Mexico — Donna Ferguson awoke in the resort city of Cancún before sunrise on a sweltering Saturday in July.
She wasn’t headed to the beach. Instead, she walked down a short hallway from her Sheraton hotel and into Galenia Hospital.
A little later that morning, a surgeon, Dr. Thomas Parisi, who had flown in from Wisconsin the day before, stood by Ms. Ferguson’s hospital bed and used a black marker to note which knee needed repair. “I’m ready,” Ms. Ferguson, 56, told him just before being taken to the operating room for her total knee replacement. For this surgery, she would not only receive free care, but would receive a check when she got home.
The hospital costs of the American medical system are so high that it made financial sense for both a highly trained orthopedist from Milwaukee and a patient from Mississippi to leave the country and meet at an upscale private Mexican hospital for the surgery.
Ms. Ferguson gets her health coverage through her husband’s employer, Ashley Furniture Industries. The cost to Ashley was less than half of what a knee replacement in the United States would have been. That’s why its employees and dependents who use this option have no out-of-pocket co-pays or deductibles for the procedure; in fact, they receive a $5,000 payment from the company, and all their travel costs are covered.
Dr. Parisi, who spent less than 24 hours in Cancún, was paid $2,700, or three times what he would have received from Medicare, the largest single payer of hospital costs in the United States. Private insurers often base their reimbursement rates on what Medicare pays.
ImageMs. Ferguson’s surgery was Dr. Thomas Parisi’s first one in Cancún. He spent less than 24 hours there and was paid triple what Medicare would reimburse in the United States.
Ms. Ferguson’s surgery was Dr. Thomas Parisi’s first one in Cancún. He spent less than 24 hours there and was paid triple what Medicare would reimburse in the United States.CreditRocco Saint-Mleux for Kaiser Health News
Ms. Ferguson is one of hundreds of thousands of Americans who seek lower-cost care outside the United States each year, with many going to Caribbean and Central American countries. For many, a key question is whether the facility offers quality care.
In a new twist on medical tourism, a Denver company is tapping into this market. The company, North American Specialty Hospital, known as NASH, has organized treatment for a couple of dozen Americans at Galenia since 2017.
Dr. Parisi, a graduate of the Mayo Clinic, is one of about 40 orthopedic surgeons in the United States who have signed up with NASH, to travel to Cancún on their days off to treat American patients. NASH is betting that having an American surgeon will alleviate concerns some people have about going outside the country, and persuade self-insured American employers to offer this option to their workers to save money and still provide high-quality care. NASH, a for-profit company that charges a fixed amount for each case, is paid by the employer or an intermediary that arranged the treatment.
“It was a big selling point, having an American doctor,” Ms. Ferguson said.
The American surgeons work closely with a Mexican counterpart and local nurses. NASH buys additional malpractice coverage for the American physicians, who could be sued in the United States by patients unhappy with their results.
“In the past, medical tourism has been mostly a blind leap to a country far away, to unknown hospitals and unknown doctors with unknown supplies, to a place without U.S. medical malpractice insurance,” said James Polsfut, the chief executive of NASH. “We are making the experience completely different and removing as much uncertainty as we can.”
Medical tourism has been around for decades but has become more common in the past 20 years as more countries and hospitals around the world market themselves to foreigners.
There are, of course, risks to going outside the country, including the headache of travel and the possibility that the standards of care may be lower than at home. If something goes wrong, patients will be far from family and friends who can help — and it might be more difficult to sue providers in other countries.
Chasing Lower Costs
The high prices charged at American hospitals make it relatively easy to offer surgical bargains in Mexico: In the United States, knee replacement surgery costs an average of about $30,000 — sometimes double or triple that — but at Galenia, it is only $12,000, said Dr. Gabriela Flores Teón, medical director of the facility.
The standard charge for a night in the hospital is $300 at Galenia, Dr. Flores said, compared with $2,000 on average at United States hospitals.
The other big savings is the cost of the medical device — made by a subsidiary of the New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson — used in Ms. Ferguson’s knee replacement surgery. The very same implant she would have received at home costs $3,500 at Galenia, compared with nearly $8,000 in the United States, Dr. Flores said.
Galenia is accredited by the international affiliation of the Joint Commission, which sets hospital standards in the United States. But to help doctors and patients feel comfortable with surgery here, NASH and Galenia worked to exceed those standards.
That included adding an extra autoclave to sterilize instruments more quickly, using spacesuit-like gowns for doctors to reduce infection risk and having patients start physical therapy just hours after knee- or hip-replacement surgery.
I. Glenn Cohen, a law professor at Harvard and an expert on medical tourism, called the model used by NASH and a few other similar operations a “clever strategy” to attack some of the perceived risks about medical tourism.
“It doesn’t answer all concerns, but I will say it’s a big step forward,” he said. “It’s a very good marketing strategy.”
Still, he added, patients should be concerned with whether the hospital is equipped for all contingencies, the skills of other surgical team members and how their care is handed off when they return home.
Officials at Ashley Furniture, where Ms. Ferguson’s husband, Terry, is a longtime employee, said they had been impressed so far.
“We’ve had an overwhelming positive reaction from employees who have gone,” said Marcus Gagnon, manager of global benefits and health at Ashley, a Wisconsin-based company that has 17,000 employees. Ms. Ferguson was the company’s 10th insured person to go to Cancún.
Ashley also has sent about 140 employees or dependents for treatments at a hospital in Costa Rica, and together the foreign medical facilities have saved the firm $3.2 million in health costs since 2016, he said.
“Even after the incentive payments and travel expenses, we still save about half the cost of paying for care in the United States,” Mr. Gagnon said. “It’s been a nice option — not a magic bullet — but a nice option.”
NASH’s strategy has its skeptics.
“Building a familiar culture in a foreign destination may be appealing to some American consumers, but I do not see it as a sustainable business,” said Irving Stackpole, a health consultant in Rhode Island. “It’s not unusual for people thinking about this to have doctors, family and friends who will see this as a high-risk undertaking.”
Mr. Stackpole said only a limited number of Americans were willing — even with a financial incentive — to travel abroad, because most perceive the care won’t be as good.
Image
Carlos Bauque, a physical therapist, helping Ms. Ferguson at Galenia Hospital. “Even if I had to pay, I would come back here,” she said.CreditRocco Saint-Mleux for Kaiser Health News
‘You Are Nuts for Doing This’
Ms. Ferguson’s knee started causing her trouble two years ago, and last autumn a doctor recommended replacing it. She is on her feet most of the day assembling furniture tool kits at her job at American Furniture Manufacturing in Ecru, Miss. Terry Ferguson mentioned the Cancún option he had heard about at work. The couple pay $300 a month in premiums for family health coverage.
“I had a friend say, ‘You are nuts for doing this,’ but Dr. Parisi trained at Mayo, and you can’t do any better than that,” Ms. Ferguson said before the surgery. Also, having an American doctor meant that if something went wrong, she could file a malpractice suit in the United States, she added.
IndusHealth, Ashley’s medical travel plan administrator, arranged for her to get a physical exam, X-rays and heart tests near her home to make sure she was a good candidate for surgery. It even had her see a dentist to make sure she didn’t have an infection that could complicate her recovery. Dr. Parisi reviewed some of those records before Ms. Ferguson headed to Cancún.
The company also coordinated her medical care and made travel arrangements, including obtaining passports, airline tickets, hotel and meals for the couple.
In Mexico, the day before surgery, Ms. Ferguson had more X-rays and had her blood drawn. After lunch, the couple met with Noemi Osorio, a nurse, who reviewed Ms. Ferguson’s schedule and showed her the physical therapy facilities. Later, they met Dr. Parisi and the rest of the medical team.
“My job is pretty easy,” Dr. Parisi told her. “How you do over the next five or 10 years depends on how well you work with the physical therapy.”
The surgery began at 8:20 the next morning. Dr. Daniel Rios, an orthopedic surgeon who practices full time in Cancún, worked with Dr. Parisi. Dr. Rios, who had done a fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, checked on Ms. Ferguson for several days after the operation.
By 9:30 a.m., the operation was over, and at 11 a.m. she left the recovery area. Dr. Parisi checked on her there. “Everything went great,” he told her before heading to the airport for his 2:30 flight home.
Dr. Parisi said that the lack of English proficiency among some surgical staff members created “momentary delays,” but that the bilingual surgical assistant helped.
A little more than three hours after the surgery, Ms. Ferguson was in her hospital room, and a physical therapist came and helped her out of bed. Using a walker, she gingerly took some steps to test her new knee. By the next morning, she was on crutches walking the hallway and was discharged before noon. She stayed at her hotel 10 additional days while having physical therapy twice a day at the hospital.
“It’s been a great experience,” she said two days after the surgery. “Even if I had to pay, I would come back here because it’s just a different level of care — they treat you like family.”
This article was produced in collaboration with Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. The author is a reporter for Kaiser Health News.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 11, 2019, Section BU, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Your Surgery in Mexico May Include a $5,000 Check. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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To me, this is when you know free market is dead in the healthcare world. When provider and customer can agree to a price and can travel to another country and rent facilities and still pay less and make more.
I am sure most will point to the potential for lawsuit as a major cost driver.
I wonder how many Americans would gladly pay 75% less if they waived their right to sue for errors? |
