Global Medicine - Globalization, Medical Tourism, American Doctors

You're aware of outsourcing of jobs, people, and products to India and China and other countries. But what about outsourcing American patients to countries for care costing as much as 90% less than in America?

An article in Healthleaders Magazine(“Predicting the Impact of Medical Tourism,” Oct. 12), says medical outsourcing may be the next big thing. The author says small businesses, health plans, and even state governments are promoting medical tourismm, i.e., patients going abroad for less expensive care.

David E. Williams, a consultant, predicts:

Prediction 1: Medical tourism will cross over to the insured population in 2008.

Prediction 2: Mini-med plans and small employers--not big health plans and blue chip companies--will be the early adopters.

Prediction 3: Opposition to medical tourism by U.S. physicians will be modest.

Prediction 4: State governments will begin to embrace medical tourism by 2010.
Prediction 5: The emergence of medical tourism won't have a major, direct impact on U.S. healthcare costs, but the secondary impact will be substantial

His rationale for prediction #3, viz, that American physicians won’t oppose patient outsourcing, is:

Medicine is already a global profession. Physicians from academic medical centers attend global conferences where American physicians from leading institutions treat their colleagues from other countries as peers. They have often trained together and they publish in the same journals. Leading physicians from overseas speak and read English.

At the community level, over 25 percent of physicians in the United States are foreign-born, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. They are familiar with the level of professionalism and training in other countries. Many of these foreign-born physicians are in secondary cities and rural areas, which also means that U.S. patients are already accustomed to getting their care from foreign physicians.

Do you agree with Mr. Williams, author of Health Business Blog and MedTripInfo? How do you react to his predictions and comments? Do you feel businesses, health plans, and state governments encouraging patients to go overseas for care is a good thing? Is it potentially dangerous?