Medical Tourism Proposal Sparks Innovations at Home [Hannaford Brothers grocers]

MPBN ^ | 12/31/2009 05:28 PM ET | Josie Huang

[fight_truth_decay]

More than a year ago, the Hannaford Brothers grocery chain became one of the first employers in the country to encourage workers to go abroad for medical care. In the time since, the company has redefined the concept "medical tourism."

"I think at that time it was probably on the outer edges of innovation to even offer it," says Hannaford spokesman Mike Norton. Norton says it was more cost-efficient for the company to send people to the Singapore hospital because it charged less than U.S. hospitals and had demonstrated strong patient outcomes.

"In their region of the world, they have the right credentials to assure that if they did a procedure you would get the outcome you want," Norton says. "A procedure like that, one of the biggest concerns to the member and the health plan is complications. A lot of the quality and cost savings are in not having any complications."

There was only one problem: No one wanted to go to Singapore.

"I wasn't going to go Singapore. I wasn't going to go outside the United States," says Jim Robertson, a retired law enforcement officer who lives outside Augusta. Robertson needed to replace his left knee, but he wasn't about to leave the Augusta area to get it. "Been out of the United States one time. We went to Scotland, and when I came back, when I got off the plane, I wanted to kiss the tarmac, I was so glad to be back in the United States."

His wife Bev, an office manager for a Hannaford store, carries her husband on her insurance. She had her own qualms

more @ http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/10405/Default.aspx

[fight_truth_decay]

"This was very important to us because this gives the hospital an incentive to provide really, good, efficient, high-quality care at a good rate."

"gives..incentive"- free-market competition, not government mandates or insurance company coercion. Physicians/hospitals compete with each other for patient "business."

[ErnBatavia]

I’d go back to Singapore at the drop of a hat....wouldn’t even need to have a medical excuse.

[Tarpon]

And most of the countries gearing up with new modern hospitals and American doctors are in the WARM Caribbean and Central American countries. Nice recovery vacation spots.

[kittykat77]

When I first started reading about medical tourism to places like India and Singapore, I knew it was the end of empire. The third world sends America its conjoined twins to separate; America sends the third world its routine cardiac bypass and hip replacement patients. Something screwy there.

[green iguana]

Something screwy there.

You should read the whole article - it's illuminating. Hannaford is no longer trying to send patients to Singapore - it's sending them to Lewiston, Maine.

[houeto]

You should read the whole article - it's illuminating.

I did and you're right. Very interesting.

[WVNan]

So, the medical business is finally getting something right and the government comes along to destroy it.