Indian medicine, coming soon to an island near you
[...] NH will open a hospital in the Cayman Islands in February in partnership with Ascension Health, the largest non-profit provider in the US. Shetty and David Pryor, president and CEO of Ascension Clinical Holdings, both emphasize that Health City Cayman Islands chiefly aims to serve Caribbean residents, who often must travel to the US for cardiac care. But its doors will be open to Americans who are willing to travel for medical treatment.
And there certainly are Americans who will go far for less expensive medical care. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 750 000 Americans annually engage in so called medical tourism by going to another country for healthcare. With the Cayman Islands just a short flight from the US, the Health City hospital is bound to attract Americans.
“The idea of inducing a typical American patient to go to India is a hard sell,” says I Glenn Cohen, a professor of health law and medical ethics at Harvard Law School who will publish the book Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethicslater this year. “Going to the Cayman Islands is a known quantity and it has connotations of luxury. Chances are this will be very attractive to many people.” [...]
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health care finance i. glenn cohen insurance international medical tourism