by Tony Chen

Fascinating article in Fast Company this month on the future of Medical Tourism. Check it out - some great pictures of their lobby & some insights/questions that all of us in the hospital business need to grapple with sooner rather than later.

A couple memorable (though maybe a little unfair) quotes from the article:

"The process will pick up speed as heavyweight for-profit U.S. hospital chains such as HCA ($26.8 billion in revenue), Tenet Healthcare ($8.8 billion), or HealthSouth ($1.7 billion) realize that hospitals such as Singapore's Parkway Group or India's Apollo chain aren't competitors so much as links in a global, offshore supply chain that can be bought and brought into the fold just as easily as a Toyota or GM plant. Medical tourism hubs will become different stops on the same assembly line: Brazil and South Africa for plastic surgery; Mexico and Hungary for dentistry; Costa Rica for a little of both; and Southeast Asia for the bodywork of heart surgery, organ transplants, and orthopedics. Patients needing new hips or hearts will be the first sent overseas by their doctors for the same reason medical tourists are headed there now: The procedures are safe, low margin, and high volume -- always the first things to go in any globalization scenario."

"The biggest losers by far would be American doctors -- especially cardiac and orthopedic surgeons -- who face the most damaging blow yet to their pride, public standing, and paychecks. In one fell swoop, they'd 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."

What do you think? Really, what can a local community hospital do about this, if anything?