Past Meetings

The feature topic of our meeting on October 9 was an examination of the growing trend of patients travelling outside of their home area to obtain medical services. The healthcare industry’s transition to value based reimbursement, as well as an increase in out-of-pocket patient costs, has caused a scramble on the part of providers to replace lost revenue and patients to shop broadly for better quality and cost. One key strategy for providers is to attract new patients from outside their local community for services in which they stand out on cost and quality. These medical travel or medical tourism programs are greatly expanding the options for employers, payers, and patients while creating new challenges and opportunities for provider systems across the world. During this session we examined why and how medical travel/tourism programs are set up and operate, along with related challenges and expected return on investment . Our speakers included Scott Pickens and Jamie Solak from Arlington Healthcare Group who have worked with hospital systems to set up these programs, ane Stephanie McCray from Bridge Health Medical -- an organization which links providers with employers and employees for medical travel. Jarrett Lewis of the Health Management Academy also summarized the results of the Academy’s recent national survey on the use of wearable technology in healthcare.