Medical Tourism
Medical Travel & Surgery Management:
The Consumer-Driven Product That Sells Itself

by Victor Lazzaro, Jr.
Employers can reap significant savings with a medical travel health benefit while giving their employees greater choice. And brokers who introduce a proven medical travel health benefit are seen as innovators in lowering healthcare costs.

The American healthcare system has become so expensive that companies are dropping coverage while healthcare is virtually unaffordable for those without insurance. Overwhelming healthcare costs and declining world economies have exerted massive pressure on the U.S. healthcare system and on employers. HR executives need all the help they can get when it comes to managing health benefits.
Surgery costs are the largest untapped source of health savings. Consider this: Surgery costs represent one-third of the total annual medical spending of $2.3 trillion. But, surgery expenditures are almost completely unmanaged, unlike pharmacy benefits or disease benefits. Thirty percent of patients, who went through a shared decision-making process about surgery, opted out of surgery altogether, according to a study by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.
Now consider the latest innovation in healthcare: improved surgical cost management through medical travel. It provides access to high-quality, value-driven domestic and international centers of excellence -- literally, the best of all worlds. With access to multiple networks, employees can easily make surgery cost and quality comparison among domestic center of excellence, international center of excellence, and local surgery choices.

Coupling Surgery Education and Access to Center of Excellence

Coupling a medical travel alternative with surgery education can provide enormous savings to employers. Surgery expenditures can be reduced dramatically when patients get information about their surgical and non-surgical options. A study by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice reveals that 30% of patients who went through a shared decision-making process opted out of surgery.

Surgery education teaches employees to make informed decisions based on surgical risks and less invasive alternatives. It teaches patients to be better-informed advocates for their own care. By reducing unnecessary surgeries and educating patients, the medical travel option is a truly consumer-directed option. This approach lowers costs, provides higher-quality alternatives, and allows employees to make choices from a wider field of options.
Now is the time to get in on this creative opportunity. The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions predicts a 35% annual growth rate for the medical tourism industry over the next few years.
This option makes sense for employers in terms of cost control, quality improvement, and employee satisfaction. It gives the employer a chance to be the good guy by adding rather than cutting options. Medical travel adds value for employees by giving them more choices in higher-quality healthcare. The result is lower costs and higher satisfaction for every stakeholder.

Choosing the Best Service Provider to Optimize Stakeholder Benefit

A surgery management and medical travel service should only include domestic and international physician networks, hospitals, and clinics that operate as true centers of excellences where customer service is a priority, not just a slogan. Center of excellence generate significant savings on high-value medical procedures and help curb the defensive medicine trend. They offer a clear fixed price by using case-rate diagnosis-related group pricing. They track service and quality outcomes rigorously based on measurement systems.

A premier medical travel service provider will incorporate patient surgery education from initial contact through recovery. It will also provide transparent costs and simplified billing as well as the choice of paying a per-case fee or per-employee-per-month fee.

What to Look for In a Medical Travel Provider

It is critical to distinguish qualified service providers from those that act as little more than glorified travel agents. HR executives, who are scrambling to rein in healthcare costs, have a best case scenario when they work with a medical travel provider that offers surgery education, turnkey member care, concierge services, and full data reporting (outcomes, savings, claims). It’s equally important to align with a provider that can demonstrate genuine healthcare experience and leadership, HIPAA-compliant operating systems, an emerging suite of vendors, and in-depth understanding of the healthcare continuum.

Here’s a quick run-down of what to look for in a medical travel service provider:

• Is HIPAA compliant.
• Coordinates the pre-travel communications for the client to the hospital and physician.
• Arranges after-care needs and tracks satisfaction and medical outcomes.
• Includes surgery/procedure costs, airfare, lodging, and transfers 24/7.
• Offers a concierge service, savings potential, and accredited hospitals

Brokers who have a clear understanding of the medical travel advantage and a check list for finding the right medical travel coordinator, can differentiate themselves and demonstrate to clients that they are thinking several steps ahead. They demonstrate that they are finding the best and most innovative products on the market for reducing corporate and employee costs, improving quality, and sustaining or increasing benefits. An added bonus is that medical travel can be added off cycle. As the healthcare reform debate rages on, it’s a perfect time to be the bearer of good news.
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Victor Lazzaro, Jr., is CEO of BridgeHealth Medical. With over 20 years of senior management experience in the health and managed care fields, he has held positions responsible for marketing, finance, administration and healthcare delivery. He is also the managing director of Volante Capital. He was CEO of UHC -- Mountain States and has served on the advisory board of MediExpress, a UHC affiliate, in Kuala Lumpur. He is also a guest lecturer at the University of Colorado at Denver MBA in Health Administration program. For more information, visit www.bridgehealthmedical.com, e-mail: vlazzaro@bridgehealthmedical.com, or call 303-457-5725.