9000 Needles

If you have experienced a stroke or know someone who has, here’s a must see new film.
9000 Needles, an award winning, new film from Bigfoot Entertainment, One In A Row Films and co-executive producers Stephen Nemeth and John Cusack, recountsthe story of stroke survivor Devin Dearth and what for many is a somewhat unconventional road [...]

Destination Healthcare – Part III: If it’s that good, why isn’t everyone doing it?

The first two blogs in this series have generated lots of discussion.  Since Destination HealthCare™, or medical tourism as some call it, remains relatively new to most people, it’s natural for there to be important questions begging to be answered.  A friend recently asked the big picture question, “If destination healthcare is that good, why [...]

American Medical Association and American College of Surgeons Comment on Destination Healthcare

In recent months, both the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons have issued new position statements regarding destination healthcare (or its less serious cousin, medical tourism).  What’s interesting about this occurrence is not that it happened, but rather the recognition by both bodies of the important role destination healthcare can play when [...]

Destination Healthcare – Part II: What is It?

In part I of this series on Destination HealthCare™, we outlined the need to separate the wheat from the chaff.  
For Destination HealthCare™, the chaff is the infobabble of outdated information, an association with leisure travel (Ed. note:  Once there’s been a scalpel involved, I’m no longer a tourist.), and the confusing array of commentary by [...]

Separating Wheat from Chaff in Destination Healthcare – Part I

A recent Google search for “medical tourism” returned over 18 million results. Some were informative, some were advertisements for facilitators, countries or hospitals, some were overviews of medical tourism, and yet others were news stories about companies or individuals who were conducting pilot tests for destination healthcare projects.  Unfortunately, too many of the hits consisted of outdated [...]

Destination HealthCare™ Differences

Destination healthcare is, for many, a very new concept. The idea that someone would leave his or her home and travel to a distant part of the world for medical attention just isn’t a common part of the American experience, yet Americans are doing it in increasing numbers each year.
Let’s face it, medical care in [...]

Destination HealthCare™

I joined China Connection Global Healthcare as COO in January 2009.  With that change came the need to catch others up on my latest move and part of the conversation inevitably involved questions about Destination HealthCare™. 
Destination HealthCare™ is distinctly different from what the media often refer to as “medical tourism”.   Last week, I even saw medical travel to South [...]

A Turkish Word for the US Healthcare System

Bozuk:  A turkish word generally meaning  “damaged beyond any reasonable hope of repair”.
A great friend and mentor lived for a time in Turkey while serving in the US Air Force and regularly tried to teach me some useful words and phrases in Turkish.  Over the course of time, only one of those words has remained with me, [...]

Medical Care I Can Afford

The memo said that the company was facing hard choices in tough economic times.  It said it values its employees and their families and hoped we understood why it had to make some changes to the health insurance plan.  This year it means individual deductions to pay for the plan, increasing the deductible (again for the [...]

A Mini-Rant about Medical Tourism

I’ll concede that China Connection’s blog might seem an odd place for a mini-rant about medical tourism.  However, it isn’t the concept that has me vexed today.  It’s the term. 
According to Wikipedia, “medical tourism” was coined by travel agents and the media to describe the practice of crossing international borders to seek medical care.  It [...]