Dr. Esther Choo: More and more Americans are pushed to take extraordinary measures while seeking health care, as we saw in the kidnapping tragedy in Mexico. But the true risks of 'medical tourism' go far beyond crime.
My cousin, Jessica Koller Gorham, a bariatric surgeon at Ochsner Health in New Orleans, told me Louisiana’s state plan only covers bariatric surgery for 300 state plan-insured employees per year for the entire state. The waiting list for weight-loss surgery, already three years long, is growing. “It’s insanity,” she said. “And so what do some of these folks do? Mexico isn’t far away.
But those risks don’t start or end with the surgery itself. A patient’s medical records won’t necessarily be accessible to a surgeon abroad, and doctors here who treat those who’ve had surgeries abroad won’t always have a full understanding of what a patient got done abroad and whether there were any known complications. People who get procedures done close to home generally have a scheduled follow-up with the surgeon or clinic that performed that procedure.
Americans may find that they have little legal recourse if a medical team abroad makes an error during surgery. Surgery can put a patient at risk for blood clots, as can sitting still for hours in, say, a car or plane. Traveling abroad for surgery, then, increases the risk of such a complication.
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