Our Gain US’s Loss in the Health Care Facility.

The latest burning issue in US is that people go out in search of cost effective medical treatments. Since India offers them what they are expecting, the same medical facilities and treatments done by experienced doctors there are lot of Americans coming to India.

This has given them a headache. To prevent this American hospitals are making the patients aware about the safety and insurance issue.

It was usual in America that people were not given proper medical health care facility if they lacked health insurance. So people turn towards India which offers the same treatment but with a small difference "at a reduced price", which is affordable by the tourist who come to India.

Statistics show that 1.5 lakh medical tourist visited India last year and their numbers are growing by 15%/year producing $2.3 billion /year by 2012.

In many foreign hospitals the medical tourists are asked to sign documents waiving their right to sue doctors for malpractice. This has led to the US hospitals to pronounce that patients will be faced with spending increased amount of money to set right the blotched up medical procedure conducted in the foreign hospital.

US health care services say that once the patient steps out of his country in search of medical help then he will be faced with inexperienced physicians and drugs, devices, techniques not approved by the Food Drug Administration (FDA) and no legal support will be provided for such patients.

Anne Marie Moncure, MD, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, says that according to the statistics 98,000 patients die in US hospitals every year due to medical negligence.

These curbing of rights are acts of protecting their hospital’s income and promoting patients not to go in search of other facilities apart from their own.

She also mentioned that the techniques used are FDA approved and the 64 slice CT angio machine manufactured by Toshiba is the same as that used at John Hopkins Hospital, New York. Doctors (41000) of Indian origin are working in US and are considered the best in the world.

All these questions would not have arisen if the US provided their patients with cost effective medical care. It’s because we are giving them a better alternative and also for procedures that are not covered by US insurance that the medical tourists are coming in search of India.

Rather interestingly the medical centre at Los Angles has announced complicated procedures to be done there to offset the American patients going overseas for their treatment.