The heart of the matter

 

"At the moment India is a top destination for heart surgery for those faced with huge bills at home"

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A quick glance around medical tourism websites reveals a number of destinations offering various forms of heart surgery at much cheaper rates than the UK cost of £14,025. Belgium, for instance, at £8,163, Germany at £8,755, or India at £5,298. But as far as UK patients are concerned at the moment, such offers are little more than window dressing, although that's not true if you live in the USA. However, that could be about to change dramatically.

 

"Almost no one goes privately for heart surgery in the UK now," says Keith Pollard of the comprehensive information website treatmentabroad.com. "There are only a handful of private hospitals doing it because there is virtually no waiting list."

 

But under the terms of a proposal due to be presented to the European Commission later this month, NHS patients could be free to travel to Europe for treatment and have their costs reimbursed, so long as their consultant agrees that it is needed. “It’s the latest legal decision opening up the EU to NHS patients. Four years ago a UK court ruled you could go if you were suffering ‘undue’ delay, then last year the European Court of Justice  said that costs  had to be refunded  if patients had to wait “longer than clinicians advise”.

 

 According to the Department of Health, 280 people were able to get hospital procedures abroad on the NHS in the year 2005/06, having obtained permission to go abroad from their local health authority.

 

But now it looks as though these limitations will be swept away in a move aimed at equalising access to health care across Europe. Already, according to the medical tourist agencies, up to 9,000 people a year are travelling abroad for necessary surgery.

 

"This proposal might give quite a boost to the numbers travelling to Europe for treatment," says Pollard. "We don't yet know the details or how the Department of Health is going to interpret it but people are undoubtedly concerned about picking up infections like MRSA or C.difficile in UK hospitals. I think we could be seeing an exodus of thousands, particularly for cardiovascular and orthopedic procedures."

 

Pollard knows of at least one case of a man who could have had a heart bypass on the NHS, but who traveled to Europe for treatment instead because his wife insisted on paying £9,000 for an operation in a hospital that was MRSA-free.

 

One obvious destination would be Belgium which, apart from being half price for heart surgery, was not only recently ranked top out of 24 EU states for cardiac treatment by the European Heart Journal, but also has a hospital acquired infection rate of 0.5 per cent compared with 1.5 per cent in the UK. Another is Germany (see box).

 

At the moment India is a top destination for heart surgery for those faced with huge bills at home. As yet no one knows if the NHS would be prepared to pick up the tab for travel there, although such outsourcing would certainly make economic sense.

 

Heart bypass operations typically cost £5,300 in India and agencies like Taj Medical group offer a package which includes medical costs and travel and 14 nights for two in a luxury hotel all for £7,800.

 

The procedure requires about a week in hospital, including three days in intensive care, and then the patient will need to recover for another three weeks or so before flying back, making a minimum stay of a month. Heart patients would also have to be careful about the dangers of DVT (deep vein thrombosis) when going on long-haul flights.

 

One satisfied patient declared himself amazed by the high standard of care the cleanliness. "The attention to detail was far better than anything I'd have got in the UK. I've been given a new lease of life and I feel bloody marvellous. I'm back into my work and I've lost two stone. It's only now I realise just how sick I was."

 

Another destination that enjoys strong government support for medical tourism is Singapore. The National Heart Centre is accredited by the JCI (see intro), sees over 85,000 out-patients a year and has a special foreign department.

 

In Germany, standards are also excellent and the prices slightly higher than India at £8,755 for a by-pass. One of Germany's top locations is the Heart Institute in Lahr, which does 2,500 by-passes a year and whose top surgeon worked at the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.  You get eight, as opposed to six, days in hospital and then a week of rehabilitation, rarely offered in the UK. The only reason a recent report could think of for not going was that the rooms don't have much UK TV available; which some might view as an advantage. Trips here are organised by Direct Health care.

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