Home Patient Stories Hip Resurfacing Testimonials City resident opts for hip surgery overseas - BURNABY NOW City resident opts for hip surgery overseas - BURNABY NOW City resident opts for hip surgery overseas Burnaby Now David Ball had been suffering with hip pain for three years when he hobbled into an Indian hospital last November. Fed up with waiting for hip surgery in B.C., the 69-year-old booked his trip to Chennai (formerly Madras) through a company he found on the Internet called Healthbase. A few months and about $20,000 later, the Burnaby retiree is hiking and biking like he used to. "If I hadn't gone, I'd still be waiting here," Ball said in an interview. Active again: David Ball can bike and hike again, thanks to hip surgery he had in India. He isn't the the only Canadian giving medical tourism a try. Saroja Mohanasundaram, CEO of Healthbase, said Canadians now make up 15 per cent of the company's clientele, while the rest come from the U.S. and the U.K. The biggest proportion of its Canadian customers come from B.C., she said. The Boston-based company arranges 200 different procedures, including hip, knee, back, heart and dental surgeries in countries such as India, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Singapore. Healthbase also arranges hotels, flights, passports and visas for clients. "We are a one-stop place," Mohanasundaram said. In 2005, medical tourism earned revenues of $20 billion worldwide, according to the research firm Frost and Sullivan. But that figure is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2010. While Americans seeking surgeries abroad usually want to avoid high medical costs at home, most Canadians have a different reason, she said. "They are very, very frustrated with the wait times," Mohanasundaram said. The hospitals Healthbase deals with are similar in quality to those in Canada, she said, "just quicker." For Ball, the process was a lot quicker - half an hour after he e-mailed Healthbase for a quote, one of its staff phoned him, asking whether he'd rather go to India or Singapore. Ball, who paid about $9,000 for the surgery, said his room in Chennai was much cleaner than the room he stayed in at Vancouver General Hospital while recovering from a stroke. "I had my bed made, clean sheets every day," Ball said. "There were no comparisons whatsoever." The private room, which he describes as a "suite," contained a TV, an Internet connection and a bed for his wife. Ball was also impressed that doctors in Chennai gave him a temporary pacemaker to stabilize his irregular heartbeat during the surgery. In B.C., his hip surgery had been cancelled when his doctor discovered the abnormality. Ball met three B.C. residents in the hospital, including one woman who told him she had been waiting for surgery for three years. "That's a pretty sad commentary, I think," Ball said. But those considering surgery overseas should think twice, says Geoff Appleton, president of the B.C. Medical Association. Appleton said it's difficult to know what standard of care you're going to get in a foreign hospital since information about infection rates, for instance, is tough to obtain. Another concern is that there may be no legal recourse for patients who receive negligent treatment outside the country, Appleton said. "It's buyer beware," he said. Ball, on the other hand, says he would recommend the surgery to anyone. "If I had to have anything else done, I wouldn't have it done here," Ball said. More at: http://www.canada.com/burnabynow/news/story.html?id=29d22523-7644-44a7-95b7-32919a43f318 Photo by: Larry Wright/BURNABY NOW   < Prev   Next > [ Back ]

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