How are American doctors fighting medical tourism trend?
Cardiologist DrRich’s latest post details the concern the American College of Surgeons have for the burgeoning medical tourism industry, and how they are using malpractice as a reason not to travel overseas for your procedure.
“Indeed, the potential difficulty in suing foreign doctors appears to be the chief differentiator, and the primary argument in favor of good-old-American-surgery,” DrRich writes. “The surgeons, in essence, are saying, ‘Let us do your surgery, because we’re easier to sue if we screw up.’”
Similar arguments are being used by radiologists against so-called nighthawk or dayhawk services, where doctors overseas interpret x-rays. Who will be accountable in the event of a mistake?
It appears that “we’re easier to sue” is the uniquely American defense to medicine outsourcing.
Related posts:
- Will medical tourism drive domestic doctors out of business?
- Radiology outsourced?
- Transplant tourism
- Should ER doctors be immune from medical malpractice?
- Doctors suffer too when they make medical mistakes
- Nighthawks, dayhawks, and the demise of the American radiologist
- Should we pay American doctors less money?
{ 1 trackback }
{ 11 comments }
Medical Tourism is the impending future. With robotic surgery, american surgeons may be able to perform surgery in any part of the world. Hospitals are already geaing up for the change, as it is inevitable with globalization. JCAHO international is going around the world certifying hospitals already. Insurance companies are talking about covering outsourced hospitalization. The wheels are in motion.
If anyone decides to get their surgery done here just because they can sue, then they probably want to sue. Most of my patients do not want to sue. They just want to get better.
A variant of ‘we service what we sell’. Focusing on potentially bad outcomes is an odd way to stop the erosion. Medical tourism is growing rapidly for a lot of reasons, many of them due to the US doctors’ themselves.
Chuck Brooks
FutureWare SCG
That’s a shame.
Whatever happened to having the best health care in the world? Wasn’t that the argument to justify why we are so expensive?
I am a family practitioner; I don’t like this trend because a patient with complications of a surgery done in Thailand, for example, will show up in my office on a Friday afternoon, and I have to “bail them out.” But you know what? I feel the same about patients who have to go to NYC to see big shot doctors for routine surgeries; I have to bail them out to.
Radiologists, surgeons: please tell me why I should shed tears for you? Did you guys care at all while primary care was/is bled into near nonexistence?
Another way of phrasing the argument is: “What legal recourse do you have overseas if your surgeon (or radiologist) screws up?”
If one makes overseas surgery attractive enough to consumers, rest assured that American surgeons would follow. Limited overseas liability and substantially less paperwork would be only two factors motivating their flight. One should consider who does the post-op follow-up in an overseas surgery. As you’ve noted earlier this week, surgeons are not eager to take on the chore when they could be operating instead. And their surgical patients would be at least an ocean away…
Realistically, this is an artificial argument, I would anticipate the introduction of legislation or insurance policies that would ensure payment would be restricted to US physicians, for liability and care concerns. That would leave self-pay customers only seeking care overseas.
I don’t know about outsourcing surgical procedures, but it is definitely cheaper to fly to a foreign country and get a MRI scan and get it read over there. I hope this helps the patients who cannot afford care in the US.
A point that is often missed in “medical tourism” is that at present, far more people travel to the US for medical care than US citizens who travel elsewhere. Just look at the number of Canadians who travel to the Mayo or Cleveland Clinics. So, the question is “how many travel here for the quality of the care that they cant get in their country and how many travel here because they can sue the doctor which they could not in their country?”
A a plastic surgeon, I would strongly dissuade a patient from traveling for cosmetic surgery. Besides the legal issues, other things to consider include:
1) Language barrier may impair communication about what is going to be accomplished.
2) Follow up visits may be compromised by travel
3) It is possible to be stuck in a foreign hospital if there are complications, i.e R&B star Ushers wife.
4) Unique overseas bacteria and virus exposure.
I blogged about this a month ago @ http://www.yorkyates.com/?s=medical+tourism.
As a surgeon who travels with my patients offshore to perform surgery, the lower risk of malpractice suits, no government or insurance company interference, and much lower costs have made medical tourism a growth industry. The USA is no longer the best place to get cost-effective care in a timely manner.
Oh, the patient has legal recourse. The patient can sue under whatever that country has for a liability system.
I had someone stop by the office once, with a cracked mandible from some sort of dental procedure done in Mexico. The person wanted to save money, went over the border. Got what he paid for.
Couldn’t find a USA dentist to take over. Wanted me to pick up the slack. I said no way. I was one of a bunch of physicians who said the same thing. Go to the state university medical center, with the dental school, and heavy tort liability.
The trial bar is nothing if not creative. Unable to sue the operating surgeon in another country, I’m sure there will be something I didn’t do 100% perfect, and concoct a way to make me take the fall for a foreign surgeon’s malpractice.
That may be why I’m always getting spammed with requests to hold myself out as the American doc to take on postop care of various medical tourist clinics.
excuse me, I meant the state medical/dental school was heavily PROTECTED from tort liability, as a state entity.
I think it is great that people have options. Maybe the insurance companies will take heed and start lowering rates.
Comments on this entry are closed.