Oct 26 2010
Rush University, in partnership with the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), has been awarded a three-year, $500,000 Market Development Cooperative Grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to help boost medical travel to U.S. academic medical centers.
The goal of the project is to stimulate growth in the number of patients from abroad choosing U.S. academic medical centers for care through better data that tracks medical care exports, networking across institutions, and the implementation of best strategic business development practices. Medical care exports are defined as medical care in the U.S. purchased by individuals outside the country.
The grant is intended to help further President Obama's National Export Initiative, announced earlier this year, which aims to double exports by 2015 in support of several million U.S. jobs. The U.S. is experiencing increasing competition from hospitals abroad for patients with specialty-care needs.
In Rush's Department of Health Systems Management, Andrew Garman, PhD, associate chair, and Tricia Johnson, PhD, associate professor, will develop the methodology to value medical care exports and assess the impact of these strategies on exports over the next 3 years.
At UHC, Steven Meurer, PhD, and Samuel Hohmann, PhD, who are both on the faculty at Rush, will establish a forum for international patient programs; create a standardized set of data elements to be reported on international patients; host a series of meetings focused on strategies to increase the global competitiveness of U.S. academic medical centers and develop strategic relationships with foreign ministries of health and private payers.
Garman and Johnson, in a study slated to be published later this year in Health Policy, estimated that in 2007 between 43,000 and 103,000 foreigners came to the U.S. for medical care, and between 50,000 and 121,000 U.S. residents traveled abroad for care. Despite a net loss in the number of medical travelers flowing out of the U.S. for care, however, the trade surplus for medical travel could be as high as $1 billion, the researchers reported.
Under the Commerce grant, the researchers expect to be able to set up a system to better track these figures and obtain more precise numbers.