Medical Tourism

Hello, my name's Edward Abell with Northeast Georgia Plastic Surgery. I'm a board certified plastic surgeon who's been in private practice here for 18 years. Today we're going to be talking about medical tourism, some of the problems with that, some of the benefits and some of the real alternatives and why we are concerned about this growing trend.

Medical tourism has been increasing over the past several years, and what we mean by medical tourism is patients who travel long distances to seek surgical treatment for various cosmetic procedures. There are people who travel for various clinical procedures for known illnesses. That is not going to be addressed today.

Today we're going to focus on traveling for cosmetic procedures. Our concern is that we are frequently seeing patients who have traveled to outside places, including places outside of our country. They undergo various cosmetic procedures from the very simple to the very complex, and they return here oftentimes having problems that need to be addressed. This can be very difficult as a clinician and it can be extremely expensive for the patients, and it can result in some relatively poor outcomes.

When you live in a community that has plastic surgeons available to you or in your nearby region, this should be your first resource. Oftentimes, patients will see a plastic surgeon and not be comfortable with seeing that plastic surgeon or want to consider alternatives. The best resource is that plastic surgeon. We often see patients who want second opinions about various procedures. We're more than happy to refer them to physicians within our practice or physicians outside of our practice in nearby communities. This usually results in a much happier patient. The majority of those patients actually return to us for their final procedure. They simply want to hear some of the alternatives, price differences, and just get a second opinion to feel safe about what they've decided to do to make sure that it is relatively standard.

Where we become concerned is when people fly long distances outside of the country or to communities that are extremely far away to seek treatment. Most people who do this do this in order to save money. First of all, this oftentimes does not save much money because of the expense of travel. Once you arrive at the outside practitioner's office or surgical facility, there's usually a reason that their procedures are so much less expensive than the procedures in your community. Providing safe surgery is expensive, providing low quality surgery can be relatively cost-effective. However, the outcomes can be disastrous.

We often have patients who go to these places and have surgery, and some of them do quite well. However, when they have a problem, this is extremely difficult. They will oftentimes show up in our offices looking for help. It's very difficult to provide them that help because we don't know exactly what was done, particularly when these procedures are done overseas.

The other big problem is fixing these problems can be extremely expensive. If a patient has a problem or complication who is under my care, touch ups, revisions, and handling of complications typically happens no charge. As a matter of fact, all of our patients receive insurance when they sign up for and pay for cosmetic procedures in our practice. Meaning if something were to happen that required additional medical treatment, hospitalization, or other expenses, you have insurance for this beyond your own personal healthcare insurance. If you've traveled to an outside place, we cannot provide this. And oftentimes these complications result in expensive hospitalizations, expensive surgeries. This is compounded upon the money that they've already spent, which makes it extremely difficult for the patients.

From a clinician's standpoint, patients sometimes show up wanting to be seen in follow-up. We have to charge for those, and that could be very expensive. If you're a patient who is within our practice, follow-ups are typically free. If the procedures need to be corrected, revisionary surgery is quite complicated, can be lengthy, and oftentimes require multiple procedures to correct any problems that happen. These would typically be covered if you had been seen in our practice. If you are seen in an outside practice, there will obviously be extensive charges for these.

If you feel like you do need to travel to an outside facility to be treated the best way possible, it would be wise to communicate with your local plastic surgeon first so that you can make certain that you have appropriate follow-up and that you can be seen in a timely fashion without having to travel. The last thing anybody wants to do after having surgery and having a complication is to have to jump onto a plane and travel to some far off place to be seen about a problem with no place to stay and the additional expense.

So before traveling for a cosmetic procedure, we strongly suggest you see your local board certified plastic surgeon and discuss that in detail with them. Don't be afraid to bring up the idea of traveling for surgery so that you can discuss that with them extensively. Remember, we work for you.