This is an interesting article and I was not really expecting to see Hoag in the tourism business but they are. Really though it’s not unusual at all though as you see Johns Hopkins and the Cleveland Clinic doing the
same thing. What is amazing though is the cost of the surgery with no money to put out by the patient to come down to the “beach”, Newport Beach that is for surgery versus staying in Las Vegas. Newport Beach is a great place to visit by all means an in the main hospital all rooms have a view of the ocean. There’s also the facility in Irvine, which does not have the same view but is equally as nice an newer as they gutted out a former hospital building there and established a second location for Hoag.
Hoag also benefits from a lot of local gifts from individuals and then has several money raising events, one being the PGA Toshiba classic which I have donated my time on the golf course as a walking score keeper in the past. Earlier this year both Hoag and St. Joseph we having conversations about how to improve care in the OC, and both are non profits. If you say Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, the equivalent is Hoag in the OC.
Two Big Non Profits, Hoag Hospital and St. Joseph Announce An Affiliation For Better Healthcare in the OC
I did some checking around the web and found Hoag listed on the website “Online Medical Tourism” and that may not be the connection used by the patient in this article but they are there. People from other countries can look at coming to the US. It’s a strange world we live in at times as we find ourselves at times having to travel else where in the US or outside the US and then we have those traveling here to get medical services they can’t get where they live.
Carol and Ed Vogel enjoyed a weeklong all-expenses-paid trip to a Newport Beach resort last month, and they're scheduled to return in a couple of weeks.
The Nevada couple didn't need frequent-flier miles or credit card rewards to get free airfare and hotel stay as well as $1,000 in spending money. It was all because of Carol Vogel's ailing hips and an employer's frustration with the high cost of U.S. healthcare. BD
Her husband's employer, newspaper publisher Stephens Media, sends employees and their family members needing hip and knee replacements to a handful of hospitals across the country, including one in Orange County, that agreed to a low, fixed rate for surgery and scored well on quality of care.
This year, grocery giant Kroger Co. has flown nearly two dozen workers to Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Irvine and several other hospitals across the U.S. for hip, knee or spinal-fusion surgeries in an effort to save money and improve care. Starting in January, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will offer employees and dependents heart, spine and transplant surgeries at no cost at six major hospital systems across the nation, with free travel and lodging.
In Newport Beach "this was 100% paid for," Vogel said. If she stayed closer to home in Nevada, "I would have been out $8,000 or $9,000 easy on my insurance." Hoag Orthopedic Institute's bundled fees for knee and hip replacement range from about $20,000 at an outpatient surgery center to roughly $30,000 or more in the hospital. The surgery location depends largely on the patient's medical condition.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bargain-surgery-20121117,0,7250543,full.story
0 comments :
Post a Comment