BOMBAY, India – Bradley Thayer, a retired apple farmer from Okanogan, Wash., traveled 7,500 miles to get his torn knee ligament fixed, and said he paid a third of what it would have cost him in a U.S. hospital. And that included airfare to Bombay.
Thayer, 60, had no health insurance when he fell and injured himself while on vacation in British Columbia. He says his U.S. doctors told him he would have to wait six months for surgery and the bills would total $35,000. So he joined a rising tide of American and European patients heading to India, Singapore and Thailand for orthopedic surgery, plastic surgery, infertility treatment and cardiology that come much cheaper than in the West.
It’s the latest in outsourcing – Asian doctors study in the United States or Britain, acquire their skills and reputations in hospitals there, then take them back to their home countries and wait for the business to come to them.
“Flying halfway around the world is cheaper,” said Thayer, beaming from his Bombay hospital bed. “I came straight to India. It’s a long way to come without tests, but I feel great.”
He had never been to India, and he first he had to overcome the stereotypes at home.
“My friends and relatives said I was crazy. They said, ‘They’ll cremate you along the Ganges.’ “
But he already felt familiar with Asian doctors. “In Canada and America, when you read the names of doctors in hospitals, every third or fourth doctor is Indian,” he said.
Hospitals in Bangalore, Bombay and Delhi and have been taking “medical tourists” since the mid-1970s, initially from the Middle East and south Asia, later from Africa, and now from the West.
So far, news has spread largely by word of mouth or on Web sites set up by patients to extol their Indian experiences. Now, the Indian government is getting behind it, offering one-year medical visas extendable for an additional year, and organizing exhibitions abroad to advertise Indian hospitals.
It is also planning a list of recommended hospitals. That’s important, because while India has top-notch doctors, it is still notorious for its filth and poverty. Even at some top hospitals, nursing care can be poor and hygiene standards dramatically lower than in the West.
Cosmetic surgeon Dr. Mohan Thomas, a member of the government’s council for medical tourism, says foreign patients need to choose carefully.
“Check the doctor’s credentials, the hospitals he is attached to and, most important, see some work he has done,” advises Thomas. “Check how much effort the hospital takes with cleanliness, starting with the bathroom.”
He said 25 percent of his patients are from overseas, primarily Africa, Britain and the United States.
Invariably, they go to the best private hospitals and stay in high-end private rooms, which are usually on different floors from the general wards.
India is a diverse country accustomed to huge disparities, and although public health standards have risen with the economy, many people can’t afford basic medicine, let alone private hospitals. There is no national health system, and government hospitals are overcrowded and underequipped.
India is still a relative newcomer to the international medical market, attracting 150,000 foreign patients in 2004, compared with Singapore’s 200,000 and Thailand’s 600,000.
But India’s numbers are increasing. In Jaslok, one of Bombay’s top private hospitals, three Americans were recovering from orthopedic surgery in June alone.
Texas-born businessman Robert Carson, 46, said he pulled out of hip replacement surgery the evening before it was scheduled in a Bangkok hospital.
A TV program about a new treatment – hip resurfacing – convinced him the procedure was less invasive and promised more mobility since the bone was shaved and not cut as in a traditional hip replacement. The procedure is not offered in Thailand. Three days later, he was in Bombay being operated on by Dr. Ameet Pispati, a British-trained pioneer of the procedure.
“I’d come back in a minute even if costs were equal to the U.S.,” he said. “I would come because of the personal care.”
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