Woman 'got my life back' after surgery in India 

By Stuart Laidlaw
Faith and Ethics Reporter

With the spring in her step, you would never guess that Jill Misangyi has a history of debilitating back problems. In fact, she looks far too young and seems much too spry for her 49 years – and has a Bangalore doctor to thank for it.

"I got my life back," says Misangyi, a Hamilton nurse who last summer flew to India for surgery she had been waiting for in Canada for 16 years.

Leaning forward with enthusiasm, when once she did so in pain, she tells of how surprised she was to find top-quality care in a developing country. It was easy to arrange and affordable, owing to the incredible volume of surgery done in the country of one billion people.

In fact, she says, "I'm saving the Canadian medical system money."

At $8,600, her spinal fusion was not only a bargain compared with the average U.S. costs of $63,000, but also represented less than a year's worth of painkillers she no longer has to take. As well, her medical appointments are much fewer, and focus now on revitalizing muscles that deteriorated while she was on the waiting list.

Queue jumping, mainly from Canada and the United Kingdom, has become a big part of the medical tourism industry, representing about 15 per cent of the market.

Nearly crippled in her 30s by three car accidents in a single year, Misangyi soon found herself on a heavy regimen of painkillers and physiotherapy that gradually slowed the once-active woman.

By last summer, she found it tough to get out of bed, but clung to the hope of surgery – spinal fusion and a laminectomy – that would relieve her pain and return her mobility.

Then, her doctor gave her the news.

"He said I was addicted to the drugs," she relates indignantly.

The doctor told her she had been on the waiting list for surgery so long there was only a 20 per cent chance it would relieve her pain and she could no longer be eligible for the procedure. The risks, she was told, were now too high.

Her back getting worse, she considered her options. Her husband had always been there for her, taking on more and more of the household chores and, like her, putting life on hold in hopes that one day she would be first in line for surgery.

But with those dreams dashed, Misangyi took matters into her own hands. She did a quick Internet search, sent a few emails and soon stumbled on the possibility of getting a spinal fusion overseas.

"I never thought I would get surgery done in India," Misangyi says. "But I did."

Canadians have long resisted anything that even suggests allowing faster care for those with the cash to pay. With queue jumping not allowed in Canada, the only option, traditionally, has been for the very rich to go south and have procedures done in expensive U.S. hospitals.

But with India, the Philippines and other countries offering to do the work for as little as a tenth of the cost of American hospitals, jumping the queue is now possible for the middle class. Easy air travel makes the world's hospitals as near as Pearson airport.

"Health care is becoming globalized," says Jason Yap, head of the Singapore Tourist Board's medical tourism office.

"It's no longer just the doctor next door, the hospital in the town centre and, if you need something major, the big hospital in the big city. Today, you can look international."

To help patients go international, as Misangyi found, there is a burgeoning industry in Canada and the U.S. of brokers who make hospitals in Bangalore, Manila or Singapore viable alternatives to University Ave. In fact, the long flights aside, it might even be easier.

"We take care of everything," says Saroja Mohanasundaram, whose Boston-based company Healthbase Online Inc. arranged Misangyi's surgery.

A concierge is assigned to each case, making sure the patient has all the needed travel documents, booking flights and hotel rooms and arranging for any needed tests to be done before leaving Canada.

All the patient must do is specify the procedure to be done, how soon he or she can leave and how many family members are coming. When they arrive at the destination, a driver will be waiting to whisk them to the hospital from the airport.

Misangyi's concierge, Moe, even called her mother when she landed to let her know she had arrived.

"I've never had care like that in Canada," Misangyi says. Before looking further afield, she had considered the traditional route of going to the U.S. to escape the Canadian wait, and called the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Preliminary tests would cost $10,000 (U.S.), she was told, with the procedure costing another $45,000 – just for the surgery. A room in the hospital to recover would cost more, but Misangyi didn't bother to ask how much more. "I could never afford that," she says.

Bangalore's state-of-the-art Wockhardt Hospital initially quoted her a price of $12,000 – flights, tests and room included. She wrote a cheque and was on her way. When the price came in lower, she got a refund.

All this was handled through Healthbase , saving Misangyi effort and stress.

Just a few years ago, arranging surgery abroad required weeks or even months of planning, and a leap of faith to place one's health in a far-off and unfamiliar hospital. The fact that it's so different now – and as cheap as a family vacation – is what worries Leigh Turner.

"It used to be more of an elite social phenomenon," says Turner, a medical ethicist at McGill University. "Now, it's becoming part of the mainstream."

Turner worries that if more people can afford to go abroad for care they would have to wait for in Canada, pressure will build to let them spend the money in this country and simply pay to get faster medical attention at a Canadian hospital.

And that, he says, would undermine the basic tenet of medicare – equal access for all.

But Vishal Bali, chief executive of the hospital where Misnagyi's surgery was done, is quick to point out that no one travels for health care out of choice. They do so because they can't get care at home.

"It is key to these people to get the work done quickly. Their quality of life depends on it," Bali said in an interview at a recent medical tourism conference in Las Vegas.

Procedures are cheap in India, Bali says, because with more than one billion people, the hospitals are able to run on economies of scale that are simply unavailable to North American facilities.

Doctors don't just specialize in orthopedics, for instance, they specialize in knee replacements or hip replacements , performing hundreds a year, while Canadian doctors are typically allotted only a few hours a month to perform such procedures.

"For a doctor in India to do 1,000 hip replacements in a year is not that uncommon," Bali says.

A report released at the Las Vegas conference, the Health Care Globalization Summit, surprised many by finding the queue jumping by Canadians and Europeans (mainly from the U.K.), was a bigger reason to seek treatment abroad than lower costs – the main impetus for Americans to travel for health care.

Fifteen per cent of the medical tourism market is made up of queue jumpers, compared with just 9 per cent who travel because the care is cheaper than at home.

More at http://www.thestar.com/article/431891

To arrange your medical or dental procedure overseas, register to Healthbase . Healthbase is an award-winning medical tourism facilitator and dental tourism facilitator connecting patients to low cost high quality health care overseas. Cost of surgery at our partner hospitals overseas is a fraction of what is found in the US with equal or superior outcomes.