By Jessica Yarbrough,

Marketing & Communications Manager, Satori World Medical

Satori World Medical’s innovative global health care program continues to gain widespread interest among U.S. employers seeking innovative ways to reduce their employees’ medical expenses.

The company is also getting the attention of the news media. Satori World Medical was recently featured in several articles about medical tourism, including two well-known trade publications for U.S. health plan and employee benefit decision-makers called Inside Consumer-Directed Care (ICDC) and Best Practices in Compensation & Benefits.

While each of these articles provides a different perspective on medical tourism, the message in both is consistently clear – when it comes to employer-funded health care, reducing health care costs is the first and foremost priority for today’s U.S. companies, and global health care offers a very promising solution.

In the recent May 2009 Best Practices in Compensation & Benefits article featuring Satori World Medical, titled “Medical Tourism: Lower Costs, Higher Quality,” George McGregor, President of McGregor & Associates, an employee benefits consulting firm, explains why he chose to add Satori World Medical’s global health care network for their contracted employers and their employees.

McGregor says, “Southern California, where we do business, has basically become a cartel medical market. There has been so much consolidation, both at a physician level and at a hospital level that it has reached a point where individual employers no longer matter. Hospitals are able to dictate 30 percent year-over-year cost increases, all while the quality of health care is declining. There is a lack of quality in the existing system as medicine has become a commodity.”

 He continues, “Meanwhile, the rest of the world has openly embraced that need for care. There are hospitals internationally that have equal to or better results than their U.S. counterparts do, and they do it at 25 cents on the dollar. So for us, medical tourism is providing immediate access to high quality care at a much lower price.”

In fact, McGregor states that as a result of having just one participating employee undergo a surgical procedure through the Satori Global Network™, McGregor & Associates saved $38,000 in the very first month.

The ICDC article, ”Start-up Company Leverages HRAs to Help Employers and Their Workers Split the Savings From Medical Tourism”, offers a detailed explanation of how Satori World Medical’s program works and why it is different than anything else offered on the market.

While other medical tourism companies also promote their services as a benefit for employees enrolled in high-deductible health plans (HDHPs), Satori’s approach is unique in its shared-savings focus.

Employers can offer the Satori benefit to their employees without a deductible or copayment. When an employee chooses to use the benefit, Satori operates much as other medical tourism companies do by arranging for the procedure, travel and follow-up care. Satori also handles the entire billing process for the employer.

But the similarities end there. Using hip replacement surgery as an example, Lash says that while the procedure typically costs $60,000 in the U.S., with the patient paying $2,500 out of pocket, that same procedure, including travel and other related expenses, costs $20,000 at a Satori network hospital. The patient pays nothing for the procedure. And the employer and employee both share in the resulting $40,000 savings at a predetermined rate. Lash says that if the company returns a percentage of the savings to the employee, say 20%, the employer then deposits $8,000 into the employee’s HRA for future use. Or the employer could select a predetermined amount to be deposited in the employee’s account.

Lash says the advantages of this approach for the employer include being able to offer a 100% benefit to employees without a deductible or copay, and the ability to share in the savings. The HRA funds also are tax-deductible for the employer. And because HRAs are not portable, they can be used as an employee retention tool. Employees, meanwhile, can use the money deposited in their HRAs to offset future premiums, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs.

With the ability to reduce an employee’s health care costs by an average 44-84 percent per procedure, including the costs of travel and accommodations for the patient and a companion, clearly this model makes sense. If you would like to learn more about Satori World Medical, please visit www.satoriworldmedical.com.

Also feel free to check out Satori World Medical’s recent media coverage by visiting Satori World Medical’s online media room.