To compete with lower international pricing for lap-band weight loss surgery the Metabolic Surgery Center at Baptist Hospital has created a lap-band wellness stimulus package.
The cost has been reduced by 25 percent, from $16,100 to $12,000, only for self-pay patients who schedule lap-band weight loss before the end of January 2010. The package includes the surgical procedure with no overnight stay or complications, as well as three months of lap-band adjustments and consultations with the hospital’s dieticians and exercise physiologists.
Bernie Sherry of Baptist Hospital says, "The package is competitive with medical tourism travel rates. Medical tourism is gaining popularity as patients cross the border to Mexico where costs of surgery are lower. By receiving treatment at Baptist Hospital, self-pay patients receive both financial value and high quality care from an accredited centre of excellence."
Dr. Charles Morton, medical director of the Metabolic Surgery
Center, says thousands of patients travel to Mexico each year for lap-band surgery, "In some places, medical qualification standards for physicians and health care facilities are very different than they are in the United States and there is no follow up care once the patient is back home."
The hospital expects the new package to draw patients from across the country and to help this has developed travel packages with special rates on hotel and air travel.
The Metabolic Surgery Center at Baptist Hospital offers one of the most comprehensive weight loss surgery programmes in the country. It is designated as a bariatric surgery centre of excellence by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS). Apart from in the USA, the only two international centres of excellence of bariatric surgery are both in London.
In Flint, Michigan, McLaren Health Care’s new proton therapy centre will open in 2012. The revolutionary treatment facility will encourage patients to come to the Flint area for cancer treatment at the Great Lakes Cancer Institute.
The facility will be Michigan’s first proton beam therapy centre. McLaren predicts an influx of medical tourists from neighbouring US states and Canada. The hospital is considering how best to serve patients and their families who would be staying in the Flint area for six to eight weeks at a time for a standard course of treatment. McLaren is open to considering options from contracts with existing hotels to partnering with someone to build a new extended-stay facility.
Cancer patients will be able to receive one of the most advanced forms of treatment available due to a partnership formed between McLaren Health Care and ProTom International, a Texas-based medical device company focused on proton therapy for cancer patients. ProTom’s proton therapy system, the Radiance 330, uses smaller machines so proton beam centres can be built for about one-third the cost and on a much smaller area than conventionally built centres that span the size of a football field. McLaren Health Care’s Philip A. Incarnati says,” Proton beam therapy represents an innovation in cancer treatment, and we will bringing such an important advancement to patients across the Midwest."
