There’s no denying that x-rays offer plenty about a patient down through their skin and to their bones. Much like the skeleton, the future of healthcare will be all about exposure: to distant locations for affordable care; to exchanges of patient medical records that ensure quality and effective outcomes; and to worldwide networks for insuring and streamlining treatment processes.
What better place to start than with insurance, which most people need, but even fewer have obtained to cover the expensive procedures and treatments that continue to soar through the roof. Now, imagine the day those skyrocketing costs are brought down to earth by a global network of insurance providers that protect international patients wherever and whenever they choose to take advantage of evaporating borders that allow access to affordable and efficacious medical care.
If all this sounds like something out of a folktale, then the sky has begun to fall without much hysteria. Forward-thinking insurance companies are already offering employer-funded health plans that allow patients to travel freely for effective, yet inexpensive care that mitigates risks for all parties – employee, payers, and healthcare providers.
Electronic systems have offered a huge step toward scaling barriers to healthcare and moving more patients across their own borders for pragmatic treatments. Transparency and portability of information are the subsequent ascensions, not only from one provider to the next, but from one country to another, both tersely and securely.
When consumers, employers, hospitals and facilitators are provided with greater exposure to the options before them, they will be able to make informed and confident decisions – based on real facts – about medical treatments in foreign lands. Chances are, what they come to know won’t hurt them and employers and insurance companies will solidify medical tourism as an integral component of their coverage plans.
If all this sounds like something out of a folktale, then the sky has begun to fall without much hysteria. Forward thinking insurance companies are already offering employer-funded health plans that allow patients to travel freely for effective, yet inexpensive care that mitigates risks for all parties.
