A Healthful Vacation

Before You Go

The not-for-profit Illinois-based Joint Commission, which accredits and certifies 15,000 United States hospitals with an aim to improve the safety and quality of health care facilities, has launched the Joint Commission International to do the same overseas. Fortis is one of the eight Indian hospitals on their global list of accredited hospitals. The Joint Commission International has board members from the American Medical Association and American Hospital Association, giving patients some assurance that a foreign hospital meets U.S. standards, experts say. Potential medical tourists can also look for doctors trained in the United States and are board certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties, a not-for-profit organization that assists in the development of standards and certification of physicians.

In any case, patients should talk to their doctor before leaving the United States, ensure that the specialist overseas and their doctor discuss their condition, and ascertain that follow-up care is also prescribed.

Medical tourists need to be wary, because not all overseas facilities resemble the Fortis hospital. One Indian-born University of Minnesota doctor specializing in global health issues says some hospitals and doctors in India do meet U.S. standards, but many are substandard. Dr. Kumar Belani says issues such as follow-up care and quality of care need to be addressed, and he’d like to see more research and oversight from U.S. regulatory bodies into the Indian health system. “Suppose something goes wrong over there,” Belani says. “What recourse does the patient have right now? The patient has no recourse.”

While Indian officials are credited with coining the term “medical tourism,” some industry observers say the nation’s poor infrastructure and all-too-common scenes of poverty are pushing Western patients away.

Rudy Rupak, cofounder and president of Planet Hospital, a California-based medical travel operator, says India is waning as a destination, except for people of Indian descent or those familiar with the country. One reason is the rise of the medical travel industry in countries that are in closer proximity to the United States. At one time, Rupak’s agency used to send a lot of people to India. But there’s that 16-hour plus travel time, and the perception that India is still an underdeveloped nation.

“I’ve had situations where clients have landed in India, they were on the way to the hospital or the hotel, and they have said to the driver, ‘Take me to the airport. I want to go home,’ ” Rupak says. “Often I encourage them to just try to go to the hospital and then decide whether they want to go home.”

But Indian hospitals are working hard to counter the sight of slums that foreign patients might see through car windows. At Fortis, the staff provides a cost estimate up front, conducts remote consultations, processes medical second opinions, assists with acquiring visas, books hotels, organizes transportation from the airport, provides language interpreters, relays news about patients to relatives back home, and arranges sightseeing, among other things.

“It’s almost a rock star experience from beginning to end in India,” Woodman says. “They can’t change the culture, but they can create an insulated experience.”