A recent op-ed by Arnold Milstein, Mark D. Smith and Jerome P. Kassirer (Overseas, Under the Knife, June 9, 2009) sheds light on the increasing popularity of medical tourism, as well as the advantages and concerns of choosing to undergo a surgical procedure outside the U.S.

Below is Satori World Medical’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Johnson’s response to the New York Times Op-Ed Piece, “Overseas, Under the Knife”

By Ronald Johnson, M.D., F.A.C.S., Satori World Medical

The article was very timely, both with the increased interest in medical travel (a recent Gallup Poll showed a sizable minority of Americans view the health care diagnosis and treatment available beyond national borders as something they would consider using) and with the national discussions now taking place on health care reform and costs.

Quality is Key, and as Dr. Milstein, et al note, there are insurers, employers and patients favorably impressed with the quality at many foreign hospitals. At Satori World Medical we use Joint Commission International accreditation as a gating issue, and use other evaluations such as affiliation with U.S. institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Harvard Medical International, Cleveland Clinic and Methodist International to name a few, comparable quality measurements such as Healthgrades, Leapfrog, American Society of Bariatric Surgery, and extensive on-site visits. As a Board Certified general surgeon and now Chief Medical Officer of Satori World Medical I have visited and evaluated all of our Centers of Excellence and I would not hesitate to have surgery at any of these facilities. We would welcome further comparative performance reporting systems for both short- term complications and long-term outcomes here and abroad.

While the cost savings are significant on these elective procedures that Americans have overseas, there is a potential for even larger savings. In a recent article in Health Affairs (Volume 27, Number 5, September/October 2008), authors from the Duke University schools of law, business and medicine describe how organizational innovation has made Indian heart hospitals a low cost, high quality success story. The article is sub-titled “How organizational innovation can reform health care, and (more important), why it hasn’t.” Lessons from the globalization of health care may help us understand why the U.S. spends twice as much per capita on health care than the rest of the world with no apparent benefit – and perhaps how global competition may change that.