HealthGlobe Medical Travel Blog

Updates from the Leader in Medical Travel

HealthGlobe Medical Travel Blog header image 1

HealthGlobe Announces New Dental Services

August 17th, 2010 · medical travel

HealthGlobe has become known as a leading Medical Travel Facilitator in the medical space, with specific focus on oncology, complex surgeries and women’s health issues. One of the great things about being in this business is that we get to help people who need medical care and a fantastic side effect of that is that people who need care contact us whether the care they need is listed on our web site or not.

What has happened during the course of 2010 so far is that people from across the country have been contacting us about Dental Care, and we have sent several people to Mexico and El Salvador who have come back with great smiles, and great feedback on the Dentists we work with.

So in response to that we have formally launched a set of dental services on our web sites and are announcing the availability of a full set of Dental Services through HealthGlobe, with specific focus on Dental Crowns, Dental Implants, Dental Bridges and Dental Veneers.

Please always feel free to let HealthGlobe know your needs and we will always do our best to respond. Contact us any time about Dental or other Medical Travel services and we will be excited to assist you in getting the best treatment to meet your needs!

→ No CommentsTags:

Domestic Medical Travel vs International Medical Tourism

August 16th, 2010 · medical travel

[The following is a transcript of the video above.]

Hi I’m Jeff Carter, Co-Founder and CEO of HealthGlobe. I’ve noticed something really interesting over the last couple of weeks and that is that in our industry when people refer to domestic travel for medical care, it is pretty consistently referred to as “domestic medical travel”. But when people cross the border and go internationally it is widely referred to as “medical tourism”. I really wonder why that is and I am very interested to get feedback from my viewers about why that might be.

At HealthGlobe we have an international network and a domestic network of health care providers. We try to act with our clients very consistently using the term “medical travel” because we realize that for our clients, generally, traveling for medical care is a means to an end. It really is about getting the highest quality care for you at what is almost always a very aggressive cost discount from what you might find in your home area. That is true whether you travel domestically or internationally. I just really is about getting the best care with the physician that you are most comfortable with.

So I would be very interested in feedback from my viewers about why you think there exists this disparity in terms of the terminology in our industry. If you want to have a personal discussion with me, you can reach me at 800-290-0197.

→ No CommentsTags:··

Employee Reaction to Medical Travel Benefits

August 11th, 2010 · medical travel

[The following is a transcript of the video above.]

Hi I’m Jeff Carter, co-founder and CEO of HealthGlobe. As you know from my other blog posts, we work with a number of employers to make Medical Travel benefits available as part of the health benefit package for their employees.

One of the things that I really think is interesting about this is that in a lot of the conversations that I have with CFOs and benefit managers are around the possible reaction of employees to the offering of a benefit like this. There is a lot of angst around this, that employees might react negatively as though the employer is taking something away from them or trying to undercut the quality of care that they get.

At HealthGlobe we have a training program for employees where we really lay out the benefits of the Medical Travel program and the fact that it really is about expanding choice for them and giving them alternative options that they have never had before.

The really interesting part about it is that employees react extremely well to these sessions. They ask questions and are very interactive and on taking surveys they are really, really open to using these programs. That’s reflected in the requests that we get from employees that we work with on a regular basis.

I would encourage you if you are thinking about ways to creatively and you are self-insured on your health benefits to get in touch with us and we would be happy to work with you to make a Medical Travel benefit available to your employees.

Thank you.

→ No CommentsTags:

MSNBC: Foreign-trained docs as good as U.S. physicians

August 3rd, 2010 · medical travel

Take a look at this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38537956/ns/health-health_care/.

This says a lot about the potential for medical travel. First of all, it says that foreign doctors trained in their home countries actually produce better results than American-trained doctors. But that headline would likely have been too caustic.

What does that mean? Well, it means that those doctors learned how to produce those results in other countries. It also means that they had to practice in those countries in order to complete their training.

This is one of the things that we have been learning at HealthGlobe for years now: In many cases, the medical care that you get abroad is actually better than the medical care you get here at home. This is worth thinking about as it has serious implications for all consumers of health care.

→ 1 CommentTags:····

Natural Sperm Magnets – Improve IVF Success Rates

July 27th, 2010 · Anadolu Medical Center, In Vitro Fertilization, InVitro Fertilization, medical travel

Antonio: We were just wondering if it is good to just leave a few things to chance?
Geneticist: We want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built in already. Your child doesn’t need any more additional burdens. Keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply, the best, of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result. –Gattaca (1997)

In the film Gattaca, the above exchange takes place between a soon-to-be father and a scientist while they are discussing genetic selection for the couple’s child. While the movie was a science fiction story about genetic engineering in the future, it raises some timely questions that are more science than fiction.

The emergence of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) has helped hundreds of people become parents by using cutting edge science to assist the natural reproductive process. These techniques have also introduced the possibility of selective reproduction – that is, parents making decisions about their children before conception even happens. While we have not started creating customized babies in the spirit of Gattaca, some technological breakthroughs have changed what we can control about our offspring, raising some tough questions in the process.

Anadolu Medical Center, a strategic partner of Johns Hopkins Medicine International and an affiliate of HealthGlobe’s InVitroGlobe service, has emerged as a worldwide leader in ART-based therapies. In particular, they have gained a reputation as one of the leading hospitals for ICSI In-Vitro Fertilization treatments.  The world-class Anadolu Medical Center is based in Kocaeli, Turkey.

Along with this treatment, they have introduced a technique known as the “Biological Sperm Magnet.” This technique identifies mature sperm cells through a unique protein binding mechanism. The most important benefit to this filtering process is that using mature sperm cells  greatly increases the chances of successful egg fertilization.  And isn’t that the whole point of IVF?

Is this a type of unethical genetic engineering that we should be concerned about? We don’t think so.

Anadolu Medical Center augments its world-renowned ISCI IVF practice with the Biological Sperm Magnet technique. The technique relies on proteins that are naturally occurring in the female reproductive tract. The process mimics the natural advantage that healthy sperm have during unassisted fertilization, thereby resulting in a more natural fertilization process.

While we don’t intend to sound too similar to the geneticist from Gattaca, we do try to understand the delicate nature of any decision about parenthood. At Healthglobe’’s InVitroGlobe business, we want our patients to be informed to make the decisions that are best for them and their families. Providing several options at affordable prices is our way of helping people become parents.

Naveen Rao, MHS
Market Analyst, HealthGlobe International

→ 3 CommentsTags:·······

What do Medical Tourism and eBay have in common?

July 25th, 2010 · medical travel

Nearly everyone who uses the internet has looked at items on eBay and many people have either bought or sold something. So what does that have to do with Medical Tourism?

When you get right down to it, I am a business strategist. It pervades my thinking when I am working at HealthGlobe and when I work with my other Carter Consulting Partners clients. Because sometimes what makes business most interesting isn’t what’s different, but what is similar between vastly different industries.

So back to eBay. This company has become the largest person-to-person commerce engine on the internet because it has built a brand and a service that individuals implicitly trust. They have taken great pains to be the trusted auction site and it has ultimately brought interpersonal commerce to a whole new level, transforming it from a neighborhood enterprise to a global trading system.

Let’s face it, buying something on eBay isn’t like buying something from your neighbor or someone at a local swap meet. You can’t touch the things you buy on eBay. You can’t look into the eye of the seller and make that critical, subjective determination that their motives are pure. You have to make do with pictures and descriptions. But you trust eBay as a brand, so you can look the other way, and in almost every case it all works out just fine.

Now, anybody who knows anything about Medical Tourism knows that the most critical issue that the entire industry is facing as an obstacle to tremendous growth is trust (and yes, I am saying that the industry is not currently growing tremendously despite any propaganda you may have read to the contrary). Credibility. Legitimacy. It is what I spend more time thinking about than any other issue at HealthGlobe.

Let’s take the example of our most popular service at HealthGlobe: IVF. We provide IVF services through our HealthGlobe brand as well as through our newly-introduced InVitroGlobe brand. We use only the best doctors working at only the most advanced clinics in the world. They have success rates that are far higher than what you find in the US (for a table of success rates as published by the US Centers for Disease Control, click here) and we use public domain reports as a comparison to reduce confusion. A much better service at a fraction of the price; generally 30-50% of what you would pay here in the US.

But even with all that, without our clients’ trust, it’s all just pictures presented alongside facts and figures. Once they decide to make the leap, however, we hear things like this, “I still am amazed at how perfect the whole trip was. I love telling this story to anyone who will take the time to hear it. I want everyone to know about medical tourism, a hugely under-tapped and much needed service for those of us in the US who want or need medical service but can’t afford it on our home turf. Very, very good to know that plenty of well-trained and competent MDs in clean, beautiful, modern hospitals exist worldwide, poised and ready to receive those of us who need them.” What a great testimonial from a Registered Nurse who used HealthGlobe to travel for care.

So with our relentless focus on the best service in the industry and tirelessly working toward a widely-recognized trust in our brand, we will continue to use the values of the successful pioneers of new industries as HealthGlobe’s guiding light in the new industry of Medical Tourism.

→ No CommentsTags:········

Medical Tourism for my employees? HealthGlobe’s got you covered!

July 15th, 2010 · medical travel

Chances are you’ve heard of Medical Travel (a.k.a. Medical Tourism) and if you’ve done any research on employee benefit plans that include Medical Travel benefits, you have probably come up with lots of hype and found only a few employers making any kind of Medical Travel benefit available to their employees.

There are several companies (many of them HealthGlobe customers) that have incorporated Medical Travel into their benefit plans but it is a long process of education and implementation in each case. This isn’t because it is a particularly difficult thing to do, but simply because it has always had to be done on a one-off basis which requires a lot of work since most large employers work with different vendors to provide their health care services. So every time you need to educate the employer, then the broker, then the TPA and sometimes even the reinsurance carrier needs some cajoling in order to get behind the idea.

HealthGlobe, in collaboration with some of the biggest players in the self-insurance industry, recently introduced a product that we hope is going to start changing all of that. Our Korean Association Preferred Health Plan (KAPHP) program is, as far as we are aware, the first off-the-shelf product that includes a Medical Travel benefit available for employers that self-insure their health benefits.

This development really sets us up to quickly get a significant number of new plans started with offering Medical Travel benefits. What’s more, the fact that we are working with UMR and Meritain, two of the largest TPAs in the US, imparts a significant degree of credibility to the plan and to the fact that it is a professionally-administered service delivering only the highest of quality and customer satisfaction so it is truly an exciting achievement in Medical Travel as an industry.

We are being extremely aggressive with the KAPHP, and have presented one group with a proposal that reduces their total health care costs, on a year-over-year basis, by a staggering 20%. To learn more, get in touch with us at info@myhealthglobe.com and we can help you evaluate the options for Medical Travel as well.

While the KAPHP is currently targeting companies domiciled in Korea with operations in the US and those headquartered in the US with significant numbers of Korean nationals, we are in the process of developing a family of plan designs that can be used by any self-funded group health plan. Learn more at the HealthGlobe web site or contact us directly for more information on how HealthGlobe can help you reduce your health care costs this year.

→ No CommentsTags:

Reduce Year-Over-Year Health Care Costs with HealthGlobe

July 13th, 2010 · medical travel

[The following is a transcript of the video above.]

Hi this is Jeff Carter from HealthGlobe and today I want to talk about a really interesting conversation that I had a couple of weeks ago. I was at a CFO Core Concerns Conference which was sponsored by CFO Magazine and I was able to participate and speak at the conference. It was in Baltimore.

While I was there I met a guy who is the CFO of a large cloud computing company that has about 400 employees. We started talking about his health care plan so he shared with me that they have a 15% year-over-year trend increase just built into their budget for their health care costs.

And so I thought about this for a minute and I asked him, “What would happen if you had a 15% year-over-year increase in your top or your bottom line? Would you just accept that and build it into your projections or would you get your best people in the room to think creatively about it and really try to solve the problem?”

Well, you know, in the course of the conversation it really came out that he feels stuck. He has to provide health care, or at least in his own mind, I think correctly, he has to provide health care for his employees and that he feels like this increase is just something that he has to accept and move forward with.

So I told him about a proposal that we put on the table for a company with 700 employees out of New Jersey recently that brought their fixed costs down by 10% year-over-year and reduced their claims costs by what we calculate to be about 20% year-over-year by incorporating a Medical Travel benefit and using some different PPO networks.

So this has created overall about a $1M savings for this plan year-over-year. So we are not talking about just reducing the size of the increase we are talking about actually bending the cost curve down and making it so that health care costs are being reduced on a year-over-year basis.

So I would be really interested to discuss with anyone what their issues are with health care and what their problems are and see if we can use Medical Travel to help reduce those costs because at HealthGlobe we really think that Medical Travel benefits are a key tool to reducing health care costs in the short term and the long term.

You can call me at 617-708-4229. Again, Jeff Carter from HealthGlobe. Thank you.

→ No CommentsTags:······

Coverage, Yes — Cost Control, No

July 8th, 2010 · medical travel

My take on yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “The Massachusetts Health Care ‘Train Wreck’” in a short entry on my personal blog: http://bit.ly/cSgx7N

→ No CommentsTags:

Healthcare Costs Moving Up on “Auto Pilot”

July 6th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the CFO Core Concerns Conference which was put on by the great people at CFO Magazine. I was able to have lengthy discussions about health care benefit costs and strategies with CFOs from a number of different industries across the country. These conversations gave me some valuable insight into how health care costs continue to escalate unchecked by speaking with the people who figure out how to pay for it: Corporate CFOs.

What amazed me was that most of the people I spoke with simply allocated a 15-25% trend increase in health care costs into their annual budget projections. No questions asked, that’s just the way it has to be.

Um. Why?

When any other vendor walks in with a 15% annual cost increase year after year, there is always at least an evaluation of other vendors to gauge whether better pricing is possible, or even simply to get some pricing leverage against the vendor. But it seems that in the world of health care, benefits are such a sacred cow that companies basically tweak two variables only: employee contributions and co-pay levels.

Frankly, it becomes pretty difficult to blame “the system” for the unending cost increases. If you asked for a 15% raise every year and every year you got what you asked for, why would you ever stop asking? You’d probably just keep asking for as much as you think you can get. So why wouldn’t insurance companies do the exact same thing?

I am not suggesting that if companies started pushing back that there would be a collapse in medical cost increases, but I am suggesting that it is rather shocking that they are not pushing back and forcing a long-term change in the efficiency of the system. Here are my two key observations:

  • BE CREATIVE!! – When your top line revenue or your bottom line profit numbers do not come in the way you had projected, what do you do? You roll up your sleeves, get your best team members in a room and start thinking creatively until you fix the problem. Well, raising employee contributions and co-pays is certainly not very creative. Put strong incentives in place for your employees to consider the cost of their consumption. Medical Travel Benefits are a great place to start, and can probably provide the most significant immediate savings, but there a whole number of ways to reduce your health care exposure.
  • HealthGlobe was able to present a 700 life self-funded group with a 10% year-over-year DECREASE in their stop-loss premium this year because they were using a Medical Travel benefit. That’s before they save money on any claims processed through the HealthGlobe Network. One more time, that’s a year-over-year *reduction* in fixed costs. Contact us if you are interested in discussing how HealthGlobe can help your self-funded plan reduce fixed costs this year.

As we continue to work more and more with motivated decision makers on how to reduce their health care spend, I will be sure to keep the updates coming.

→ No CommentsTags: