Health Tourism Comes to Panama

Friday, September 09 2005 @ 08:41 PM EDT

I recently sat down to talk with Dr. Richard Ford, the Medical Coordinator for Pana-Health.com, a company based out of Panama City providing medical services to foreigners, visitors, and tourists. This was my first exposure to "health tourism" so as you can imagine I had a lot of questions.

Can you tell me a little about your company and what you do?

"About two years ago we decided to form a coalition of highly capable and experienced medical providers here in Panama City to provide health services to visitors. Medical or health tourism is a rapidly expanding field, and we recognized the opportunity to offer high quality healthcare at an exceptionally reduced price when compared to the United States. There are several advantages to using our services. Pana-Health provides executive health tourism coordination services for our customers. Our company coordinates medical and non-medical procedures and treatments in Panama."

What is health tourism?

"Health tourism is a term that has risen from the rapid growth of the industry where people from all around the world are traveling to other countries to obtain medical, dental, and surgical care while at the same time touring, vacationing, and fully experiencing the attractions of the countries that they are visiting. A combination of many factors has lead to the recent increase in popularity of medical tourism - exorbitant costs of healthcare in industrialized nations, ease and affordability of international travel, rapidly improving technology and standards of care in many countries of the world, and most importantly proven safety of healthcare in select foreign nations have all led to the rise of medical tourism. More and more people are traveling abroad as an affordable, enjoyable, and safe alternative to having medical, dental, and surgical procedures done in their home countries."

Tell me about the doctors you use.

"Pana-Health is a group of specialists that include the best health professionals of Panama. They have joined together to give our patients the best medical treatment available in the country. Our group is formed by health specialists trained in some of the world’s most prestigious universities and hospitals. The technology as well as the medication used to treat our patients is the same as that used in the United States and Europe. The cost of therapy in Panama compared to the United States and Europe is less expensive, since overall expenses are lower in our country."

What kind of healthcare do medical tourists obtain?

Myriad options exist for medical tourists - from purely elective procedures such as rhinoplasty, liposuction, breast augmentation, cosmetic dentistry, and LASIK, to more serious and life-saving procedures such as joint replacements, bone marrow transplants, and cardiac bypass surgery - medical tourists can now obtain essentially any type of medical or surgical procedure abroad in a safe and effective manner for a fraction of the cost that they would face in their home countries.

What specialties and procedures are available?

We provide a wide range of services and cover most medical specialties. No matter what medical service you require, chances are good that we have a service provider available that will be a good fit for your needs. Some of the services we offer include:

• Plastic Surgery
• Assisted Reproduction
• Cardiology
• Dental Implants
• General Dentistry
• Ophthalmology (eye doctor)
• Gastroenterology
• Pneumology & Allergies
• Orthopedics
• General & Oncologyc Surgery
• Urology
• Extreme Makeovers

Who are medical tourists?

Medical tourists are generally residents of the industrialized nations of the world and primarily come from The United States, Canada, Great Britain, Western Europe, Australia, and The Middle East. But more and more, people from many other countries of the world are seeking out places where they can combine vacationing and obtaining their medical care at an affordable cost.

Tell me a little about one of your typical patients.

For the most part, our patients want to take a vacation, and to take care of a medical need in conjunction with a travel holiday. A regular travel agent is simply not capable of taking care of our patients' needs. We treat people every day from all over the world. Our patients want to take advantage of the cost differences that exist between Panama and other parts of the world for health services. Almost all of our doctors have been trained in the United States and are bilingual. Many of our patients are also return clients, or those who have been referred to us by past customers. We have done very little promotion or advertising, and have been relying on word-of-mouth. Our patients sometimes return with family and friends for other medical needs or to simply enjoy our enchanting beaches and rainforests once again. While in Panama our customers are accompanied by representatives from Pesantez Tours, the largest tourism agency in our country."

What do you see as your goal or mission in this field?

Pana-Health's mission is to assist patients worldwide in gaining access to accurate and reliable information on health-related services provided by physicians, medical centers, dental centers, hospitals, eye clinics, alternative medicine providers and independent practitioners, for the purpose of receiving a medical or non-medical procedure or treatment. Our pledge is to provide each of our clients with the information and support required in their decision making process to search, identify, and obtain a health-related procedure or treatment from one of our affiliated providers.

What are the cost savings for medical tourists?

The cost savings are enormous. For example, for the same price as a week long vacation for two in Hawaii that includes airfare and boarding & lodging, a couple can travel to the natural and lush beauty of Panama to include airfare, boarding & lodging, personal tour guide/concierge, and LASIK corrective surgery for two. The average cost of private heart surgery in the United States is $50,000. That same operation with comparable rates of success and complications costs only $10,000 in the finest and most state-of-the-art hospital in Panama. A bone marrow transplant that costs $250,000 in the U.S. costs only $25,000. Large price disparities such as these exist across the board for numerous medical and surgical procedures. And because of favorable currency exchange rates for medical tourists, the costs associated with accommodations, food, shopping, and sight-seeing are similarly very favorable.

To Contact Pana-Health.com: