The globalization of health care was the central theme of a recent seminar at HMS, organized by Harvard Medical International (HMI). Robert Crone, HMI president and CEO, chaired a series of presentations on developments in the global health care community, as viewed through the lens of HMI’s work with its institutional partners. Crone was joined by a cadre of HMI team members who discussed initiatives in India, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
Much of the growth in health care systems development, said Crone, is occurring in the emerging economies, home to around 4.5 billion people (70 percent of the world’s population). A demographic shift is under way in many populous countries in Southeast Asia, South and Central America, and the Middle East, where life expectancy is increasing as well as the number of health care consumers with the means and willingness to pay out of pocket for one-time interventions like joint replacement and cardiac surgery. These consumers are better informed, less willing to wait for treatment, and beginning to demand that these interventions be available close to home.
Medical tourism, an industry worth $60 billion and growing, is another driver of change. High costs and long waiting lists have thousands of patients in the United States and Europe looking abroad for life-altering care at an affordable price. An estimated 500,000 patients will travel to India for care this year; thousands more will turn to hospitals in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Half a million Americans are expected to leave the country for treatment.
Many of them will visit one of the new privately run specialty hospitals catering to international patients and the emerging native middle class. “These hospitals are able to operate cost-efficiently due to labor costs, and as greenfield developments, are willing and able to institute a culture of quality from day one,” said Crone. “Many are expanding regionally and competing globally.”
A growing number of organizations around the globe have formalized collaborations with world-class academic medical institutions like HMS in order to build and strengthen their expertise. HMI put several of these collaborations on display during the seminar, including Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC), a large-scale initiative for which HMI has developed new models of governance and created two affiliated organizations to support postgraduate education and research: the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center, Institute for Postgraduate Education and Research and the Dubai Harvard Foundation for Medical Research. All of this has been accomplished within a designated “free zone” in which HMI and DHCC have a blank canvas on which to create an essentially new health care system. Presenter Mehul Mehta, HMI’s chief strategy officer, called the free-zone concept “one of the dominant models of transformation in health care today.”
The seminar also offered a look at two health care organizations striving to become regional centers of excellence while partnering with HMI. When it first partnered with HMI, Istanbul-based Acibadem Healthcare Group had an annual nurse turnover rate of 33 percent. Acibadem has worked with HMI and faculty from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on an extensive nursing leadership initiative that has helped cut turnover in half and resulted in the development of a competency model for nursing practice.
In India, HMI partner Wockhardt has a growing network of specialty hospitals at the center of South Asia’s medical tourism boom. Beyond giving international patients a choice when it comes to hip replacements, Wockhardt offers advanced interventional cardiology, performing awake minimally invasive cardiac surgery, operating a state-of-the-art catheterization lab, and achieving a remarkable 30-minute door-to-balloon time.
For complete coverage of “The Globalization of Health Care,” please visit HMI World (www.hmiworld.org).
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