Medical Tourism Aligns with an Offshore Medical School

Veteran readers of this blog know that I have given extensive coverage to the topic of medical tourism for a few reasons. For one, I believe that the U.S. healthcare system is pricing itself out of business. Secondly, I believe that medical tourism will provide competition for the U.S. based health systems and force them to be more consumer-oriented and lower the cost of care. Thirdly, medical tourism continues to evolve in interesting ways as entrepreneurs abroad forge new strategic relationships and approaches to healthcare. I came across an article recently (see: Apollo, AIMU mull medical tourism projects) that emphasizes this last point. Below is an excerpt from it:

The Apollo Group has signed an MoU [memo of understanding] with the American International Medical University (AIMU) to develop $200 million worth of medical tourism projects in Bahamas and St Lucia at the existing AIMU teaching and administrative facilities. Apollo would develop, manage and monitor the healthcare facilities, which would also support teaching and research. The AIMU group of institutions provide health care services and medical education. It has programmes such as MD, Post MD and PhD in its campuses in Bahamas and St Lucia. AIMU offers upto $1.5 million as scholarship to Indian students every year. As per the MoU, Apollo will develop a super specialty teaching hospital, research and treatment facility for AIMU.

This relationship between the Apollo Hospitals, discussed previously in this blog, and the American International Medical University makes perfect sense from the perspective of both entities. First I list below the advantages that I envision for Apollo:

• Establish a high quality hospital in two prime tourism destination (Bahamas and St Lucia) in close proximity to the mother of all healthcare markets -- the U.S.
• Market their health system as working in partnership with "an American medical school." This has the possibility of backfiring on them if AIMU is not perceived as a prestigious partner in the U.S.
• Continue to offer a price advantage by taking advantage of lower labor costs and medical liability costs in two emerging Caribbean countries.

Here is a list of the advantages that I foresee for AIMU:

• Affiliate with an innovative health system offering state-of-the-art technology that would attract U.S. patients and could theoretically provide training opportunities for its own undergraduates and graduates.
• Attempt to cast off its reputation as an inferior medical school that attracts only rejects from U.S. medical schools.
• Generate additional revenue through its relationship with the Apollo Group that would allow it to improve its faculty and physical facilities.

As an aside, the AIMU web site look very amateurish to me. Also, the fact that one can take an on-line admission test for the school does not instill confidence in the rigor of its admissions process.

Comments

[Mike Snow]

Any reason the big payers wouldn't start to organize this? Cut a deal with the airlines; hotels; hospitals; doctors. Ensure quality of care for insured; provide support in case of complications, seems it would be a way to reduce costs.

[Emzee]

US patients are attracted to South and Southeast Asian countries and even to Mexico (since it's so near) mainly because they offer good quality, low-cost and no-wait medical services. Many private hospitals in these countries maintain best practice standards of care, are JCI/JCAHO/ISO accredited, offer world-class treatment and employ medical professionals who are educated in accredited universities in the US, UK, Australia, etc., so there is no doubt about their credibility, reliability and quality. And, after one has recovered, these countries offer a variety of tourist destinations, where one can rejuvenate.

To help the global medical consumers connect with the international hospitals, a few medical tourism facilitators or medical tourism operators have sprung up in the recent past. However, when choosing a facilitator one must pay attention to the quality of hospitals on its network. Only JCI/JCAHO/ISO accredited hospitals are the ones that meet US standards of healthcare and have world-class facilities.

One such leading medical tourism facilitator that works only with JCI/JCAHO/ISO hospitals overseas is Healthbase (http://www.healthbase.com). It offers an excellent array of medical tourism related services on its portal. One can do everything from researching on the various medical procedures available out there to communicating with the surgeons overseas to planning and booking their travel at their website. It also provides the facility of applying for a medical or dental loan.

[John adams]

Here is a web site I found on healthcare tourism safety.

HealthCare Trip (www.healthcaretrip.org),

a HealthCare Tourism International 501 c 3 nonprofit organization in the United States, is an organization that provides safety and accreditation to healthcare tourism service providers including medical tourism operators, hotel chains and transport companies.

They are non-profit and they also have a complaint and dispute resolution service for patients.

www.healthcaretrip.org