Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic compete for medical tourists

Cleveland Clinic has launched an international website focused on providing Middle Eastern visitors with streamlined access to information on diseases, conditions and treatment options. The site features an interchangeable Arabic/English option, enabling visitors to learn more about Cleveland Clinic’s world-class care in their native language.

Cleveland Clinic has launched an international website focused on providing Middle Eastern visitors with streamlined access to information on diseases, conditions and treatment options. The site features an interchangeable Arabic/English option, enabling visitors to learn more about Cleveland Clinic’s world-class care in their native language.

The new website utilizes the existing internet platform with a focus on providing health information on diseases and conditions that are prevalent in the Middle East region. The site also provides contact information, resources to make travel arrangements easier and an overview of services available through the international patient office. For patients and families, there are translated resources to help with making an appointment and coordinating a visit. There are also condition-specific guides to better understand diagnosis and treatment including cardiovascular disease, women’s health and epilepsy. The website has profile information about 1,800 doctors, including languages spoken and diseases/conditions treated. Patients can select the best practitioner to meet their individual needs.

Bill Ruschhaupt of Cleveland Clinic says, “For many years, we have treated patients from all of the Middle East countries. This website is just one way in which we are continuing to provide all of our patients, and prospective patients, the best experience possible.” Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, is a not-for-profit academic medical centre that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. It operates nine regional hospitals in Northeast Ohio, Cleveland Clinic Florida, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas and Cleveland Clinic Canada. Patients come for treatment from every state and from more than 80 countries.

Mayo Clinic has joined the medical network of UnitedHealthcare, making it cheaper for 20 million of the insurers’ commercial members around the country to seek care there. This is the first national contract Mayo has signed and is part of a move by Mayo to shed its aura of expensive exclusivity. UnitedHealth members will now pay in-network prices if they go to Mayo, which can offer significant savings over out-of-network prices. This national agreement with UnitedHealthcare covers all Mayo’s group practices and hospitals in Rochester, Jacksonville, Phoenix and Scottsdale.

Mayo had smaller, specialized contracts with UnitedHealth in the past. Since 2004, it’s been part of UnitedHealth’s transplant network. It also has contracts with other national insurers, but those agreements only cover people in some regions of the country. Mayo has a reputation for being more expensive per procedure while UnitedHealth has a reputation for driving a hard bargain with providers. The promise of more commercial business is attractive to Mayo because after barely breaking even in 2008, it only managed a small profit in 2009. Mayo treated 528,000 patients last year. Currently, 20 to 30% of patients travel more than 500 miles for treatment.

Cleveland Clinic is also benefiting from several company and insurers deals where US patients travel some distance for certain procedures. Lowe’s home improvement stores recently offered employees free trips to Cleveland Clinic for cardiac surgeries in return for lower cost sharing. 44% of its heart surgery patients are not from Ohio. Lowe’s deal, rolled out in February, is a success, with 19 employees (15% of those likely to be eligible for the surgery in any given year) taking advantage to date. Lowe’s expects to break even or save money on each operation, even after providing financial incentives such as waiving the deductible and paying all travel costs for the employee and a companion. One of the first employee patients, who faced a particularly complex heart problem, cost the company $469,000, compared with the $531,000 local hospitals would have charged.

US insurers and top hospital groups have accepted the benefits of US domestic medical tourism, and are embracing President Obama’s entreaties to increase jobs by increasing exports, and attracting medical tourists from overseas into the USA. President Obama is focused on promoting economic growth, to create job opportunities for US workers, and export opportunities for service providers. His administration sees Asia as a key target market for goods and services. The National Export Initiative (NEI) aims to double US exports by trade deals and encouraging US businesses to invest overseas. Ironically, this means that US businesses that may have considered medical tourism for employees are now in an environment where the government is actively against any overseas outsourcing of goods or services.